summer 2007 / #11
www.foammagazine.nl
Raimond Wouda JR Lauren Greenfield Oliver Sieber Viviane Sassen Ryan McGinley
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foam magazine #11 / young
editorial / contents
Editorial
Contents
Marloes Krijnen, director Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
In this eleventh issue of the quarterly Foam Magazine we are proud to have the opportunity once again to focus attention on highly diverse forms of photography, presented in a manner that highlights the work’s various qualities and places it in an unusual context. The priority given to photographic content and the space devoted to it in the presentation of the portfolios has led more than once to Foam Magazine being described as a portable museum. It is an evaluation that delights us. We like the idea of each portfolio as a small-scale solo presentation where the prime consideration is photography – without distractions. We believe this to be a distinctive and essential feature of Foam Magazine. For Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam and Vandejong Communications – the originators of this publication and its current publishers – it remains a formidable challenge, but also a great pleasure, to ensure that Foam Magazine is a journal that knows no equal and thus occupies a unique and esteemed position within the existing range of magazines and periodicals. The theme of this edition is ‘Young’, focusing on the diversity of ways in which youngsters feature as the subject of photographic series and projects. Young people have always been a source of inspiration for photographers, but we sense that in recent years there has been a remarkable increase in the volume of work explicitly focusing on youngsters. Hence the editorial decision to exclude any historical portfolio in this issue of Foam Magazine, and rather to concentrate on work that was shot recently. We present work from Thin by Lauren Greenfield, which focuses on teenage girls in the US who are suffering from serious eating disorders and a profoundly disturbed self-perception. The young people portrayed by Ryan McGinley are far less disturbed. His work is distinctive for its unprecedented energy and zest for life, as if he were fuelled directly by the unbridled energy and non-conformist behaviour of the group of friends in front of his lens. In his latest series, School, Raimond Wouda took photographs of massed groups of students from an elevated viewpoint. It is the street rather than the school that is the biotope of the French photographer and street artist JR. In Portrait of a Generation this young photographer explores the banlieues of Paris and portrays the inhabitants in all their glory and rawness. In J_Subs by Olivier Sieber we see the how expert Japanese youngsters have become in presenting themselves in the stereotypical attire of Western subcultures. Lastly, Viviane Sassen transports us into the world of youngsters from various parts of Africa. We are especially pleased with two sections recently added to the magazine. This edition opens with an extensive interview with Brett Rogers, director of the Photographers’ Gallery in London, in which she talks about the gallery’s imminent change of location and the role of specialized contemporary photographic institutions. And in the feature ‘On My Mind…’, six individuals who are active in the cultural sphere are invited to present a photo that currently preoccupies them. We are delighted with the surprising choices of Aline Pujo, Christian Caujolle, Chris Boot, Christopher Bucklow, Bill Hunt and Paul Andriesse. This issue opens with an essay by Marcel Feil, curator at Foam. It also provides the latest information about Foam’s exhibition programme, with a special contribution by Mitch Epstein, and an overview of recently published books.
On My Mind... images selected by Christopher Bucklow ~ Chris Boot ~ Aline Pujo ~ Paul Andriesse ~ Bill Hunt ~ Christian Caujolle
Interview with Brett Rogers As flexible as possible. A conversation between Brett Rogers and David Campany about the future of the Photographers’ Gallery by David Campany
Pages 022 - 026
Young:
Theme introduction To Have No Idea Where Life Will Take You by Marcel Feil
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Pages 027 - 034
portfolio: Raimond Wouda ~ School text by Merel Bem
Pages 035 - 54
portfolio: JR ~ Portrait of a Generation text by Anneloes van Gaalen
Pages 055 - 074
portfolio: Lauren Greenfield ~ Thin text by Max Houghton
Pages 075 - 094
portfolio: Oliver Sieber ~ J_Subs text by Christoph Schaden
Pages 095 - 114
portfolio: Viviane Sassen ~ Flamboya text by Catherine Somzé
Pages 115 - 134
portfolio: Ryan McGinley ~ Celebrating Life text by Adam Baran
Pages 135 - 154
Photobooks ~ by Tanja Wallroth
Pages 156 - 159
~
Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam Mitch Epstein ~ American Work Foam exhibition diary
Pages 016 - 021
Pages 163 - 177
Raimond Wouda ~ School
JR ~ Portrait of a Generation
A high school is paradise for a photographer who’s always been interested in groups and social relationships between people. So three years ago Raimond Wouda decided that this was the place to be for his new series. For three years he stood in the middle of the corridors, halls and canteens, and observed these 12 to 18-year-old children for his project School.
An undercover photographer, engaged artist and self-described ‘activist’, French street artist JR turns his photos into huge posters that he illegally pastes on the streets in cities world wide. He turns the city streets into enormous open air photo galleries, confronting passers-by with up close and personal portraits of youths from the banlieues.
Lauren Greenfield ~ Thin
Oliver Sieber ~ J_Subs
Since 1997 Lauren Greenfield has been documenting the lives of patients at the Renfrew Center in Coconut Creek, Florida, a residential facility for the treatment of young women with eating disorders. This resulted in the project Thin, for which Greenfield penetrated the dark heart of this most insidious of mental illnesses.
Sieber is interested in young people’s quest for individuality and identity, and in subcultures that rebel against traditional values. For the series J_Subs he photographed young people dressed up in rock ‘n roll and punk outfits, after they visited concerts in Osaka and Tokyo.
Viviane Sassen ~ Flamboya
Ryan McGinley ~ Celebrating Life
Throughout Viviane Sassen’s work speaks a concern for the issue of the representation of Otherness, whether in the form of gender, physical ability or ethnicity. Since 2002 Viviane Sassen has been travelling to East and South Africa, photographing mainly young people.
Most of the photographs in this portfolio were taken during the summer of 2005, when Ryan McGinley travelled around the US in a van with groups of friends. In the spirit of the classic American roadtrip, he photographed them running around naked in the woods, desert, lakes and oceans, jumping off bridges and simply having fun.
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foam magazine #11 / young
Six well-known figures from
the cultural world selected an
image that has recently been
on their minds...
co-editor: Addie Vassie
On My Mind...
Christopher Bucklow For the past few months I’ve been writing a book on the painter Philip Guston. During that time this photograph has often been on my mind. It shows Guston, aged 22, in 1935. What fascinates me is the thought that here in this young man, a process that he could have had no idea about at all, was already underway – a process that would lead, as it unfolded over the next forty years, to the astonishing symbolic images of his last decade. What is uncanny – and a source of wonder to me – is that I am sure that the young man in this picture would have been unaware as to precisely why he chose to paint the objects and things he painted. And yet, from the vantage point of his old age, he found that he had unconsciously chosen to use things that all fitted in with a pattern that could be seen only at the end of the process. Everything fell into place; and one can feel his own awe about this strange fact in his letters to his friend Ross Feld (collected and published as Guston in Time, Counterpoint, New York, 2001). But there is another layer to this. Why do I, Christopher Bucklow, notice this particular phenomenon in Guston – this exact phenomenon and not others? As a young man I read Art History as a degree, and then went on to work for more than ten years in a museum. Today I see that everything I chose to write in the way of art history, actually had a purpose, a personal purpose that is only apparent now, as I approach my fiftieth year. It all adds up – and has become my artwork. So, in a very real way, this photograph must stand for myself. Think about what you would have chosen. +
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Portrait of Philip Guston by Arthur Ames, 1935 © Arthur Ames, courtesy McKee Gallery, New York
Christopher Bucklow is an artist, based in the UK.
foam magazine #11 / young
On My Mind...
From ‘Notes from Jo’ (1991-94), © Keith Arnatt
Chris Boot I first met Keith Arnatt four years ago, in a pub near his home in Chepstow, South Wales, to discuss the possibility of doing a book of his work. He’d become a very obscure figure within photography, at the time preoccupied with taking pictures of cows in the fields around his house, which he felt combined all the themes of his work to date – the history of art and the history of photography. But barely anyone else saw them and I didn’t really get them. He struck me as lost and quite sad, much like his story: the highly successful conceptual artist who was converted to photography, and then became obscure and forgotten as a result. Rather than publish the cow pictures, I said I’d do a book of all of his photographic work if we could get a show off the ground. Four years later, we did, although not long after our meeting Keith went into care in a nursing home.
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In the 1990s in perhaps the most straightforward documentary series he made, he documented notes that his wife left for him around the house. Jo – who he married in 1953 – chastises him for his domestic misdemeanors (‘Where are my wellingtons you stupid fart?’, ‘You bastard! You ate the last of my crackers!’) and gives him rudimentary instructions on feeding himself (‘Pies in oven. Press down thing that says ‘start’ to start.’). They are a portrait of a man who’s rather helpless about the house, looked after by a loving but necessarily slightly bossy partner. David Hurn, who worked on the book, had to explain one of the notes to me: ‘In bed but awake!’ was Jo’s invitation to Keith to come and make love to her when he got in. I find it a wonderfully poignant testament to growing old with your lover. + Chris Boot is a London-based photobook publisher, see www.chrisboot.com. He is the publisher of I’m A Real Photographer – Keith Arnatt Photographs 1974-2002 in association with the Photographers’ Gallery, June 2007.
foam magazine #11 / young
On My Mind...
Aline Pujo It was quite a while ago that I encountered the series of Michael Jackson portraits by Valérie Belin in an exhibition, and they stayed with me ever since. Michael Jackson is his own double: he is in a state of constant metamorphosis. You could say he is one of the first public figures to have understood how to present himself as an icon, in the sense of his not representing the subject in his physical features but in his aura. Michael Jackson blurs the possibilities of the image. Lookalikes are people who usually take advantage of a formal resemblance, which they stage-manage in order to switch identities. They are the paradigm of a form of behaviour that plays on appearance and image in order to dispel one’s proper identity and adopt another. Standing in front of this series of Michael Jackson lookalikes induces vertigo, because you no longer know who is whose double. These portraits denounce a world where appearances are predominant, taken to the very extreme. +
Aline Pujo is curator of the collection Neuflize Vie of Banque de Neuflize/
Valérie Belin, from the Michael Jackson series, 2003
ABN AMRO, based in Paris.
© Valérie Belin, 2003
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On My Mind...
Paul Andriesse It’s ironic to be asked to choose one photo, when I’ve always argued that a single photo means nothing. Faced with one photo you are simply unable to read its meaning or significance. With a second photo you can use similarities to get an idea of the outlook or intention of the photographer, or the necessity of making that particular photo. So we immediately arrive at a problem. I think the popularity of the medium of photography in artistic circles and in exhibitions has led to a snapshot culture. Is this an attractive photo or an arresting photo, a good shot? Expertise gets pushed to the margins. There are certainly plenty of people who have an opinion. There are even people who claim to know what counts as a photo and what doesn’t, thereby denying anything in the second category the right to exist. They are photos that shouldn’t go thinking that’s what they are. It’s an image all right, but not a ‘photo’. Such attitudes probably arise from the current Dutch teaching of photography as an ‘art-form’, involving small projects and little tricks and having fun. Just put together a good collection of photos, a photo book, and do so year after year.
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I believe I actually see the most in the documentary tradition of photography. In my view photography is an investigative medium that can show us much that is worthwhile and instructive and stir the emotions. I also have great faith in the author, the studious, contemplative person who takes the photos or groups them together. I’d happily get rid of all those anonymous photos, which are so charming, since the usual line of reasoning is that the image is fascinating or amusing (compare the choosing of a postcard to send to granny), or that a such a photo is just as good as one taken by a star of the photography or art world. It attempts to compete with authors, who actually achieve something. Mind you, I love photography and I love art. The importance of both is clear to me. A very good book has just been published called Beautiful Suffering (University of Chicago Press, 2007) in which a number of essayists, drawing on excellent examples, consider the significance of the contemporary photographic image as it reaches us through the media, following on from Allan Sekula and Susan Sontag. How should we handle concepts like ‘beauty’, ‘fact’ or ‘importance’? There are authors who are also photographers, like Robert Adams, who for decades has used nature to show the ideals and failings of human civilization in meticulous books with wonderful photos. There is Inferno and Paradiso by Alfredo Jaar, published in 1999, which demonstrates human possibilities in a skillful selection of photos that succeed in conveying information and generating emotions. If I am forced to chose one photo then I’ll take a polaroid, preferably an SX70. It’s at any rate unique and already framed. The camera that makes it is a miracle in itself, not to say an artwork. One man invested years and millions in it. Another instance of faith. And one thing this camera is particularly good for is photographing products. That’s very clear. You take a photo of a chair and everything is explicit. That’s what you want to show or remember. Photography as art, that’s something I don’t care for at all. + Paul Andriesse is a photographer and art historian, known internationally as the owner of Galerie Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam.
foam magazine #11 / young
On My Mind...
Photographer unkonwn, dimensions 9 x 14 cm, collection of W.M. Hunt
W. M. Hunt The history of photography is not so much written with Alfred Stieglitz and Andreas Gursky but rather with family gems tucked away in grandma’s attic like the curiosity above. This is a photo postcard of a group of people in bird costumes nesting on a hay wagon. Beyond the strange and obvious we can wonder who are they and what is this unlikely event. My obsession with images of masked people was evidenced in the exhibition of my collection at Foam earlier this year, but lately I have also been drawn to photographs of crowds, specifically American ones made before 1950. It strikes me that the percentage of images of groups of people – 5 is a group – in the whole of photography is miniscule. Perhaps it is especially difficult or awkward to photograph a mass of people.
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Sam Wagstaff, the pre-eminent collector, acquired his first image at a flea market, and it was a team portrait, a group of young men in sport jerseys. He didn’t buy it for its aesthetic handsomeness or because it’s maker was well-known. One of the young men was his father. Apparently among the ‘bird people’ above are my partner’s long lost cousins from Indiana. Aunt Terri Hahn thought it would be an appropriate and ingenious addition to my collection. The heart and soul of photography are these family memories. + Bill Hunt has been collecting photography for over thirty years. His Collection Dancing Bear has been exhibited at Rencontres d’Arles in 2005, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne in 2006 and in 2007 at Foam. With his business partner Sarah Hasted, Bill Hunt opened Hasted Hunt gallery in New York in 2005, representing a wide range of photography from classic vintage work to contemporary work by emerging artists.
foam magazine #11 / young
On My Mind...
Anonymous photographer, Bangkok, Thailand, 1930s
Christian Caujolle I don’t collect photographic prints, though the many presents that photographers have generously given to me over the years have ended up amounting to a collection... The only prints I collect are those I have managed to find over the last twenty years in South-East Asia, a region which has become a personal passion. These prints are primarily anonymous portraits taken by studio photographers, most of whom also remain anonymous, and the majority are portraits of youngsters who are about to enter military service or spend time serving in a temple. My collection comprises an ensemble of portraits of men, mainly bonzes, individually or in a group. I found it frustrating not to have any portraits of women, so I mentioned this to the charming stallholder who is one of the few to sell
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photographs at Chatuchak, the massive weekend market in Bangkok. He unearthed about ten portraits of young women from the 1930s for me, including this one, which I find especially disconcerting because of the awkward presence of the text in English. What romantic tale is hiding behind this image, which gives away nothing that would allow me to find out who the protagonists were? This photograph, along with thirty others, is featured in the book Circonstances Particulières… Souvenirs, published by Actes Sud in June 2007. + Former critic and picture editor for the French newspaper Libération, Christian Caujolle founded VU Agency and Gallery in Paris. He continues to serve as art director of VU, but now also teaches at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis Lumière, and organizes a seminar at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. He is also publishing books and curating exhibitions around the world. He is based in Paris.
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interview
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foam magazine #11 / young
interview
~ As flexible as possible: A conversation between Brett Rogers and David Campany about the future of the Photographers’ Gallery ~
by David Campany ~ photographs by Toby Glanville
The Photographers’ Gallery opened in 1971. Part of its mission, as with the other public spaces for photography that opened in the 1970s, was to champion photography in the face of a sceptical or indifferent art world. As we know photography has since become an established part of contemporary art. One might conclude that the specialist photography gallery has done its work and is no longer needed. But actually the terms on which art has embraced photography have been quite narrow. The task of a place like the Photographers’ Gallery then becomes a championing of the breadth of photographic practice. Would this be a fair assessment? Yes definitely but I would maintain that it’s not only the breadth but depth of photographic practice we have been involved in championing. Other art institutions that have begun showing photography over the past decade – and this cultural shift seems to have taken place only since the mid 1990s – still don’t offer an ongoing and deeply engaged commitment to it. Yes, they have provided the ‘scaffolding’ which has helped raise public awareness and reflect contemporary artists’ interest in the medium, but we have provided the ‘structure’ necessary for the medium to grow and we have not been afraid to dig down into the foundations to interrogate the photographic image in all its forms.
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I have always enjoyed that commitment of The Photographers’ Gallery to the medium in all its forms. As a writer, artist and teacher photography has interested me because it’s such a great bluff. I can claim to be a specialist because I’m interested in photography, but really it’s a licence to engage in everything from art, architecture and animals to medicine, history, fashion, anthropology, politics, cinema, video, you name it. I’ve been visiting the gallery for more than twenty years and I have seen that breadth. But in these days of branding and specialism does that inclusiveness present a challenge to the identity of the Gallery? Or does the fact that photography is the common theme hold it all together? What does the term ‘specialist’ mean these days? Before the digital explosion and when we first started in the 1970s, it meant a coterie of people who went into the darkroom, studied in the visual arts or had some other passion for the history of the medium. Now with access to digital and mobile phone cameras, it’s easy to pretend that ‘we are all photographers now’. But simply having the ability to create millions of images doesn’t mean you understand the power of the medium, its languages or conventions. That’s where the gallery plays a key role – not just in disseminating information but encouraging debate, discussion and discrimination about the nature and specificity of the medium. I think the gallery’s inclusiveness has been our strength – and that will continue. Even if we occasionally choose to include paintings, text, drawings, magazines or other related media in the gallery as we do increasingly, it’s because we want to flag up photography’s role within visual culture generally rather than narrow it down to representing just one or two different points of view. Because so much within the medium has changed since we were established in 1971, there is, as you say, pressure on us to redefine our place within the cultural landscape. But I find that challenge exciting and feel we can benefit enormously from the confluence of interest from artists and the art market in the medium, alongside the apparent ‘democratisation’ of photography whereby everyone feels that they have access in some way or another. >
foam magazine #11 / young
interview
~ Simply having the ability to create millions of images doesn’t mean you understand the power of the medium ~
You are set to move to a new location soon. How have your plans been affected by the new cultural situation for photography that you describe? Our new location is on the other side of Soho – near Oxford Circus and Carnaby Street, just off the busiest shopping and fashion street in Europe and in the heart of the new media and creative industries of Soho. New aspects such as a regular fashion strand will be introduced into the programme as well as a ‘Wall for All’ – a digital wall visible 24 hours a day, through which we plan to engage the casual audience who may never have visited a gallery before, by highlighting the way in which new technologies have impact on their lives. We plan a number of other programme strands which are designed to raise the profile of contemporary practice as well, such as a Triennale focusing on contemporary photo-based work by British artists or artists living in the UK. There are so many possibilities to explore once we get our new building. It is true that in many respects the photograph has become an immater-ial image belonging to screens of various kinds. Meanwhile the Gallery bookshop expanded a few years ago. This seemed to be a response to the surprising renaissance in photobook publishing and the belated recognition of the centrality of the printed page to the medium’s history. Do you see these developments as separate or related? That is a very interesting proposition – that the huge growth in photographic publishing over the past decade by independent photographers may be related to, or perhaps a response to the emergence of the photo as an immaterial image. I do feel that photographers have always related to the physicality, the materiality of the book, like the way it is held in the hand and ‘read’ through certain conventions – in a different way to other visual artists. Its also clear to me that many photographers – of all generations – now consider the presentation of their work in book form to be as important as its presentation in other formats, like gallery walls, magazines or screens. Beyond the obvious concern with the print or reproductive qualities of the book (which has been
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a recurrent concern from the time of Bill Brandt’s amazingly ‘sooty’ black printing in his classic photobooks from the 1930s and 40s) there is the question of narrative and sequencing, how to convincingly relay the message through image rather than text – or sometimes a combination of the two. It has been good to see some recognition of the importance of the photobook through various recent publications, like Martin Parr and Gerry Badger’s pioneering work, as well as in a number of exhibitions in New York, Amsterdam and Germany over the past year or so. It is interesting that among the celebrated photographic artists of our time there is a real split in approach to the book. I think of figures as diverse as Martin Parr, Hans van der Meer, Robert Adams, Michael Schmidt, Susan Meiselas, Victor Burgin and Allan Sekula having a direct stake in the book form. While for others – Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, to name the obvious ones – the book is little more than a catalogue, a space for critical analysis or promotion. Anyway this leads me to think about the mediation of photography. You have alluded to this already and it strikes me that the Photographers’ Gallery has always put a great deal of emphasis on mediation – talks and events, education, newsletters, books, outreach projects and so forth. I am often struck by the fact that on the one hand great claims are made for the accessibility of photography (that it is not difficult, that we all have a stake in it and so forth) while at the same time there is a perceived need to mediate it for the public. It is almost as if photography is so ubiquitous that we can’t quite see it or get a proper perspective on it. The Gallery forums then function as spaces set aside to estrange that familiarity a little, so that we may see it afresh. Yes, you are right about that misperception of photography, that just because of its ‘wraparound’ quality it is assumed to be immediately comprehensible. The gallery does have this legacy for its role as a mediator – our educational and public programmes have always been integrated with our exhibitions programme which was quite unique especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Recently our talks curator
foam magazine #11 / young
interview
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foam magazine #11 / young
Brett Rogers assumed the post of Director of The Photographers’ Gallery in Novem-
ber 2005. In her previous career as Deputy Director of the British Council’s Visual
interview
Arts Department she was responsible for the promotion abroad of British visual art, embracing photography, architecture, design, fashion and new media. For nearly twenty years she specialised in developing the photography policy and programme for Visual Arts, creating landmark touring shows by contemporary British photographers as well as significant historical figures such as Madame Yevonde and Julia Margaret Cameron. She has written widely on photography and contributed to numerous photography publications. Brett Rogers was born and educated in
Clare Grafik and her team have introduced some fascinating new strands. The Book Club examines a broad range of work, be it photographic theory, fiction such as the books of W.G. Sebald or contemporary issues in practice such as embedded journalism in Iraq. Then we have Folio Forum, an opportunity for any practising or aspiring photographer to present their work for feedback in front of an invited critic and the public; Teen Talks is designed to provide 14-19 year olds with the skills and confidence to respond to work on show, in front of a public audience; Café Scientifique is a discursive evening group led by scientists exploring topics where science and the photographic meet. So yes, the nature of the talks and events programme is equally to demystify the complexity of photography – which we all know exists – as to allude to its essentially ‘slippery’ nature, its ability to feel accessible and open yet at the same time offer opportunities for different levels of understanding.
Australia and came to the UK in 1980 to read for her MA in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London). David Campany is an artist, writer and Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster. His books include Art and Photography (Phaidon 2003) and Photography and Cinema (2007). He has written for many journals including Aperture, Source, Photoworks and The Oxford Art Journal. ‘Adventures in the Valley’, his experimental documentary made in collaboration with Polly Braden, was shown recently at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Toby Glanville, born in London in 1961, works as a photographer in London. In 2003 his monograph Actual Life was published by Photoworks to coincide with an exhibition of his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It presented photos taken in Kent from 1997 to 2000. His photographs are included in several publications, including Family (Phaidon 2005) and One Hundred Photographs: A Collection by Bruce Bernard (Phaidon 2002). His photo essay, Granta: The River, was
Given the breadth of your remit is it difficult to decide exactly what to exhibit and why? Presumably being answerable to ‘photography’ in the wide sense you describe must engender all manner of difficulties. Yes, it is difficult and one needs to balance the different demands from the photography and visual arts constituency, present and future funders and stakeholders alongside the need to attract new audiences. It is impossible to please everyone all the time and we certainly don’t set out to do that. But we do try to create a ‘balanced’ programme within a twelve-to-eighteen month period that reflects our programme ‘strategy’. Of course we remain very constrained within the current facilities we occupy in terms of fulfilling the ambitions of our programme and expect that our new site in Ramillies Street, Soho will enable us to present a greater mix of different shows all at the same time. The architecture of the current Gallery is split totally in two, with an exhibition space and bookshop in one building and a second gallery with a café and print room in the other. Both have small floorplans only a little larger than typical London town houses. We must remember that there was a time when photographs were invariably small and were seen by invariably small numbers of people. Today the Photographers’ Gallery has huge attendance figures, especially for a venue of its size, and of course there is a whole range of photographic work it just cannot show properly. The gallery was set up with a specific kind of photographic object in mind – the small windowmounted print. What kind of object does the new Gallery imagine? In the new space, we need to be as flexible as possible in responding to the changing nature of the medium. You are certainly right about the past but who knows really what scale or form the photographic image might take within the next 30 or 50 year period? For the next decade or so, I am convinced that we need galleries with sufficient scale – room heights of a minimum four meters – to take larger scale work and video installations. We need flexibility in terms of layout and both daylight and black box possibilities to allow for a wide range of options. Also, we need to include opportunities for the public to engage with new technology – through the Wall for All in the entrance lobby and café and for interventions at other places within the gallery, bookshop, print room, resource room and so on.
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published in the magazine for new writing Granta in 2004. Glanville’s photographs are included in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery in London, the British Council, the Bruce Bernard Collection and the British Land Contemporary Art Collection, among others.
Part of the present excitement about photography in the UK has come from a reengagement with its past. Photography really entered into the currency of contemporary art via Pop Art and Conceptualism, neither of which had much time for the history of photography. And a lot of what is currently celebrated as ‘new’ turns out, if you look closely, to have had its precedents. Today many people are searching beyond the familiar histories of the medium and they are finding a wealth of rich and strange imagery made over the last one hundred and eighty years. I sense that an important aspect of the future of photography is going to be its past. That is certainly true and represents for me one of the most exciting possibilities of the medium. Only yesterday I was looking at an archive of boating pictures from the first part of the 20th century and all I could see was a typology of similarity and difference in spinnaker formations and the formal architecture of the boats themselves. Like our successful London Fire Brigade Archive exhibition last year, these vernacular yachting images, if exhibited today, would be understood and interpreted in so many different ways thanks mainly to the 1960s legacy you refer to. More proof that photography is constantly reinventing itself! +
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theme introduction
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theme introduction
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foam magazine #11 / young
theme introduction
~ To Have No Idea Where Life Will Take You ~
by Marcel Feil ~ curator Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
A new and quite distinct genre seems to be emerging in photography: the portrayal of young people. Whether referred to as young adults, youngsters, adolescents, teenagers, youths or children, they are evidently an inexhaustible source of material for photographers of every stripe. Recent years in particular have seen an undeniable increase in photographic series that concentrate on capturing images of adolescents. Think of the international success of Rineke Dijkstra’s beach portraits, a success that may have helped consolidate interest in the subject and has even at times led to outright mimicry. Think too of another Dutch photographer, Hellen van Meene, whose star is rapidly rising, of Marion Poussier in France who caused such a furore with her photos of teenagers at summer camp, the carefree girls in the allegorical work of Justine Kurland, the lone American girls portrayed by Lise Sarfati, the unrefined street photography of Nikki S. Lee, which centres on the many subcultures so typical of rebellious youth, the vigorous, zestful work of Ryan McGinley, regarded by many as one of the most talented photographers of his generation, and the often painful, meticulous observations of Lauren Greenfield, who exposes with such crystal clarity the dark side of an American teenage culture defined to a great degree by a self-image imposed by the media. Examples are legion and often extremely diverse. Whether the subject is the psychology of an individual teenager trapped between childhood and budding adulthood or young people as a social group with a special dynamic, its own norms and values, clothing and behaviour, the degree of attention currently given to young people by the photographic arts is remarkable.
Rineke Dijkstra, Hilton Head Island, SC, USA, 27 June 1992 Š Rineke Dijkstra, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
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The child has always been an important and rewarding source of inspiration for artists. In earlier times childhood was almost always seen as a carefree, golden period, a rich source of ideas about innocence, candour and purity. In the early years of photography young children were often placed in front of the camera as genetic trophies of one kind or another. At the very least their presence meant the continuation of the family line, new progeny within a community. Their importance can be understood in the light of high child mortality in the late nineteenth century. Through photography, time could be stopped for a moment, capturing children for eternity in their youthful innocence before they outgrew their clothes or, more tragically, died young. In this sense portraits of children all too often have a dual meaning. On the one hand they represent a battle against mercilessly advancing time, even death, an attempt to prevent the image of a child from sinking into the quicksand of memory. On the other hand such portraits are the preeminent symbols of vanitas, referring to our own youth, to a time that lies behind us and will never return, the ultimate proof of our own impermanence, our mortality. The idealized notion of childhood as a sanctuary, its innocence absolute and unquestioned, belongs firmly to the past; artists were chipping away at this conception even in the nineteenth century. Take for example the way Julia Margaret Cameron, not to mention Lewis Carroll, captured Victorian children. No guileless image of innocence and purity here but children full of suggestiveness, ambiguity and burgeoning feelings of lust and sexuality – the child is the subject of a fantasy, perverse or not, that originates in an adult brain. It is precisely the ambivalent character of children that makes them such eminently suitable subjects onto which to project our own emotions and ideas. As a result, the ways we treat children and the judgments we pass on them usually say more about us and the times we live in than about them. The images of children produced by the majority of contemporary artists are far from unambiguous: children are vulnerable and merciless, sweet and malicious, dependent and self-reliant, mysterious, unpredictable and intangible. Children arouse desire in us, but also envy and sometimes even fear. In fact it seems that children, certainly teenagers, are first and foremost problematic. We do not really know how best to handle them. >
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~ ‘Adolescence is a kingdom of fallen and still falling angels, but it is yet a kingdom (...)’ (James Agee)
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Rineke Dijkstra, Vondelpark, Amsterdam, 19 June 2005 © Rineke Dijkstra, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
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foam magazine #11 / young
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The Times They Are A-Changin’ The word adolescence is derived from the Latin adolescere which literally means ‘to grow up’. It is a period characterized by confusion, shame, rebellion and sexual uncertainty. Hormones gush through the body, creating turmoil at an emotional as well as physical level – something many of us look back on with mixed feelings. Just think of the period when you lurched back and forth between childhood and early adulthood, the feelings of deep melancholy that arose as everything trusted and familiar fell away, to be replaced by an indeterminate and uncertain future: dolls and toy cars on one side, an incomprehensible world of teen bras and electric razors on the other. The body transforms itself into an ill-defined adult shape, where innocence still resides but which already hints at emerging sexuality. The simultaneous presence of past and future, decline and fruition, hesitancy and newly acquired power makes it a period experienced by many, not least by adults, as threatening and intriguing in equal measure. Never before, indeed seldom since, has the transition from innocent childhood play to ambivalent adolescence been captured so impressively and poetically as by Helen Levitt in her incomparable book A Way of Seeing. In the late 1930s and 1940s Levitt became intrigued by the many chalk drawings that were part of the street culture of New York children, especially those living in deprived neighbourhoods. She bought a Leica camera and began photographing the chalk sketches and the children who drew them. It was not until some twenty years later, in 1965, that a large proportion of her photos appeared in book form, the accompanying texts written by James Agee. With enormous clarity and precision, in a style as lyrical as Levitt’s pictures, Agee describes what the children in the portraits were going through, a transition to a new phase of life: ‘The cardinal occupations of the members of this culture are few, primordial, and royal, being those of hunting, war, art, theater, and dancing. Dancing, indeed, is implicit in nearly all that they do. (…) But subtly, ineluctably, the quality of citizenship in this world where all are kings and queens begins to shift and, almost invariably, to decline and to disintegrate. The rock drawings lose their intuitive and hieratic brilliance if not, at first, their poetic vitality; they are no longer prehistoric or in the artist’s sense religious; they have become mere bulletins of desire, aggression, and contempt. And in each child, from very early, the germ of the death of childhood is at work. (…) Adolescence is a kingdom of fallen and still falling angels, but it is yet a kingdom, with its own kinds of wild animal glamor, with profundities of grave purity which are peculiar to it; with its unappeasable hunger and pity, and its own awful threshold to the world beyond, that Babylonian captivity in which dreams are either manufactured by outside authorities or rest, as a rule, forever unformed and unsatisfied. On this threshold it is still possible to retain something of the ancient genius for gaiety and for symbol; but one has also become forcefully aware of what we commonly call reality in its official form, its lowest common denominator.’ 1
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Teenage Riot First, however, before adolescence too becomes swallowed up by ‘reality in its official form’, comes rebellion. Rebelliousness is an essential characteristic of adolescent behaviour. There is a need to kick against the traces, to fight the established order of parents and adults, conservative and defensive by nature, to put paid to things-asthey-are-and make space for new generations, new blood, new life – this proves to be a law of nature mankind cannot escape. Yet a true youth culture, in the sense of a real and recognizable counterculture and all that goes with it, has existed only since the fifties. Greased quiffs and Vaseline, leather bomber jackets, petticoats, sleeveless T-shirts, Elvis and James Dean, Chuck Berry yelling ‘Hail, Hail, Rock ’n’ Roll’ – the world has never been the same. It is no accident that this counterculture, which spread across the globe like a virus, first emerged in 1950s America. In the United States in the postwar period there was a latent ideological pressure that effected men in particular, urging them to conform to their traditional role as breadwinners and loyal employees. Peace on the home front and a strong economy were essential prerequisites of the Cold War that had just begun. No less ideological, however, were the oppositional voices of writers, sociologists and psychologists infected by a fear of collectivization and a deep concern that the American middle classes were becoming a subservient social group that no longer relied on its own inner compass. They regarded private initiative, the pioneer mentality, individualism and adventure as America’s core values, to be defended where necessary by fire and sword. The psychoanalyst Robert Lindner went so far as to claim that ‘the push toward conformity could damage individual egos, because man is a rebel by nature who cannot conform. Therefore if men did not find positive avenues of rebellion, they would risk becoming psychopaths, outsiders and threats to civilization’. Members of the Beat Movement, including Norman Mailer, were no less explicit in their defence of rebellious and non-conformist behaviour. For Mailer, the people known as ‘hipsters’ were the heroes of their generation, ‘American existentialists’, a mixture of bohemians, negroes and juvenile delinquents – all three, far from coincidentally, a threat to the established white order. Nor is it coincidental that Mailer wrote the text that accompanies the series Brooklyn Gang by photographer Bruce Davidson. This series, about the fortunes of a street gang in South Brooklyn called the Jokers, originally appeared in Esquire in 1959 and was published as a book only in 1998. It shows a lost world full of ‘stickball and boardwalks, of Vaseline hair and rolled sleeves, Kent filters and Karl Droge Big Squeeze Ices, basement dances and Susie the Elephant Skin Girl. The atmosphere was tight and intense, filled with flinty looks and an almost accidental glamor, where tattoos were more a fierce indoctrination than a calculated lifestyle choice.’ The gang appears to live in a territory all its own, shut off from the rest of the world of which it no longer expects anything, with no clear future and no clear aim. Its members are all ‘rebels without a cause’. Davidson succeeds in capturing not only the energy but the fear, rage and aggression typical of tormented youngsters as they come of age. The images of that hot summer in Brooklyn certainly have a timeless value, but when Davidson took his photos the world of the Jokers was already moving on. Heroin was making its appearance and the neighbourhood was changing fast. >
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Vondelpark, Amsterdam, 10 June 2005 Š Rineke Dijkstra, courtesy Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
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The hardening of youth culture that shows through to some degree in Brooklyn Gang has seldom been so pitilessly portrayed as in the work of Larry Clark. He is generally seen as one of the most important and influential American photographers of his generation, famous above all for his raw and controversial photos and films focusing on sexuality, drug use and violence among adolescents. Through his mother, ironically a specialist at photographing babies, Clark came into contact with photography early on. At the age of sixteen he and his friends began using amphetamines. The camera was always with them and Clark shamelessly took photos that were eventually published in the book Tulsa. They show three young men in the American mid-west at the time of the Vietnam war who – out of boredom and a spirit of adventure – slide from ecstasy to paranoia and trauma. The book produced shock, controversy and heated arguments about the state of America and American youth. Much of Clark’s later work is equally explicit in its portrayal of sexuality and drug use. In photographic projects such as Teenage Lust and The Perfect Childhood, as well as the film Kids, Clark repeatedly investigates the same timeless themes: the formation of a personal identity in adolescence, the devastating effects of dysfunctional families, manhood and the origins of violence, and the relationship between mass media and social behaviour. When it comes to young people and the dark side of the American dream, or young people gone astray, it is impossible to ignore the 1995 book Raised by Wolves by photographer Jim Goldberg. He focuses on the hundreds of young children who run away from home each year to lead an insecure and dangerous life on the streets. They stand by each other in the hope and expectation that they will be stronger if they stick together, improving their chances of survival. Goldberg’s characteristic combination of photography and handwritten texts, written by the young people themselves, amounts to a unique document in which, with empathy and appropriate detachment, a picture is created both of individual street kids and of the inimitable solidarity that prevails among them. >
~ We try to be unique and individual, but not at the expense of our position within the social group ~
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All by Myself At no stage in life is the judgement of our peers so important as during puberty. Nothing is worse than being excluded from the group or clique with which your whole existence is bound up. Adolescents constantly balance on the slackened tightrope of acceptance or rejection, ever conscious of their place in the pecking order. One wrong remark or illconsidered choice of clothing and they will be subjected to scorn and derision. A young person’s behaviour and appearance are therefore above all an ode to uniformity. We try to be unique and individual, but not at the expense of our position within the social group to which we belong. There are often dozens of such little groups and subgroups living in close proximity, and only the initiated know who belongs in which. As Christoph Schaden rightly asserts in a the text written to accompany the work of Oliver Sieber: ‘the code decides’. No one is more sensitive to fashions, trends and new gadgetry than an uncertain and therefore impressionable teenager, and what may easily be seen as a personal and unique style is often nothing more than naive and unwitting conformity to an idealized image imposed by the media. The consequences this can have in the United States, for example, are strikingly portrayed in Lauren Greenfield’s 2002 project Girl Culture. How tempting it becomes, then, for photographers to remove these vulnerable teenagers from their familiar and protective groups, isolating them and placing them in front of a camera. How delicate a business it is, too, since the photographer can easily take advantage of this powerful position, hiding behind an often impressive piece of photographic equipment. It is precisely this way of capturing adolescence that has taken off in recent years, usually aimed at showing things that are not directly visible but lurk just beneath the surface. Although her work should be seen in relation to illustrious predecessors including August Sander and Diane Arbus, Rineke Dijkstra stands out as having captured the psychology of the adolescent to a degree rarely achieved before. Her series of beach portraits transcends differences in nationality and social class and touches, in a direct and intelligent manner, the essential nature of adolescence as a complex of inseparable processes of physical and psychological change. The power of her work also lies in the way she demonstrates that, although as objective and as neutral as possible, her photography is always and by definition artificial. She uses a large-format camera and fill-in flash, which makes the presentation of her images artificial in the sense that it is as much about portrait photography itself as about the subjects of her portraits. The power and intensity of her work and her strictly objective working method, also characteristic of the work of Jitka Hanzlova, Marjaana Kella and others, could almost be said to have become a school in its own right, with numerous adherents.
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This leaves us with the question of why young people, teenagers, adolescents or whatever we may choose to call them have attracted the attention of so many photographers in recent years. Of course we were all young once and remember how it feels. In this sense the subject-matter readily appeals to a large number of people, and we can always make a connection between it and our own personal development and memories. Is this pure nostalgia, a broadly based longing for a ‘Paradise Lost’, a Proustian search for a time that will never return? Is it an implicit reference to our own transience and mortality? Or do we at this particular juncture recognize ourselves in the adolescent who, although he knows he exists, thrumming with hormones and governed by the complex interplay of unfathomable processes, has no idea who he is or where life will take him? + Notes 1. For James Agee’s foreword in A Way of Seeing see http://www.masters-of-photography.com/L/levitt/levitt_articles2.html
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Raimond Wouda School
Damstede II, Amsterdam 2003
Lingecollege II, Tiel 2006
Caland Lyceum I, Amsterdam 2005
Scholengemeenschap Tabor I, Hoorn 2006
Grotius College, Delft 2007
Koning Willem II College, Tiel 2006
Damstede I, Amsterdam 2003
Buys Ballot College I, Goes 2005
Hervion College II, Den Bosch 2005
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Raimond Wouda
Raimond Wouda (The Netherlands, 1964) is interested in the relationship between people and their surroundings, as shown in his photos by his careful choice of viewpoint, often from unexpected positions. Wouda studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague. He has shown his work in many exhibitions, including Luoghi della Cura, Chiesa San Paolo, Modena (2005), Histoire(s) Parallele(s)/Confrontation, Institut Neérlandais, Paris / Foam_Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam (2003), Section One/Solar, Museum of Photography, The Hague (2003), Fotografen in Nederland, Museum of Photography, The Hague (2002) and Wild Zone, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2001). A solo exhibition of his latest series School was held at Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam in 2007. His work has been included in several books and catalogues, including Dag Osdorp (De Verbeelding, Amsterdam),
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Histoire(s) Parallele(s)/Confrontations (Filigranes Editions, Paris) and Fotografen in Nederland (Ludion). With Henk Wildschut he photographed the Indian tanker Sandrien, published as the book Sandrien (By The Way, 2003), and more recently – also with Henk Wildschut – Wouda published the book A’DAM DOC.k (By The Way, 2007), with photos of the Amsterdam harbour.
Merel Bem studied Art History at the University of Amsterdam. She is a free lance art and photography critic, writing regularly for the Dutch daily newspaper De Volkskrant, CBK Noord-Holland and ArtReview.
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Awkward Fumbling at the Lockers
by Merel Bem
Has anyone ever told a story from the viewpoint of a school locker? What a story that would be. A locker may seem like just a boring grey box with a simple combination lock (or nowadays a code), imprisoned in between rows of other identical little boxes. But nothing could be further from the truth. Lockers are unsuspected sources of information. Within those little metal boxes, the odour of damp gym clothes and long-forgotten packed lunches is intense. Tardy notes and bad report cards lie yellowing with age, and photos of potential sweethearts change almost daily. The lockers are where it happens. That’s where clandestine kisses are exchanged, notes passed, fashions paraded and secrets whispered. So it’s no surprise that about three years ago photographer Raimond Wouda decided that this was the place to be for his latest photo series. In 2002 he started an independent project photographing in schoolyards, ranging from vocational secondary schools to urban prep schools, throughout the Netherlands. From there he worked his way inside, so to speak, initially to the rows of grey lockers, the place where school social structures and underlying relationships are most visible, where in the tangle of teenage turmoil there’s so much to see.
Wijk aan Zee Beach, 2001 © Raimond Wouda,
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Just take a look at Wouda’s photo of the school Damstede I, Amsterdam (2006). Two rows of lockers face each other. The space between them is confining and the pupils swarm about in between. Nearly everyone is wearing the same backpack, with wide black straps trailing down their shoulders. In the left foreground are three girls, viewed from behind. Apparently today is red T-shirt day, because that’s what all three are wearing; the two girls furthest left sleeveless, with bared backs. And all three wear their medium-length hair loose. One of them is talking to a fourth girl, dressed today in pink, with her hair neatly combed back into a ponytail. Apparently she has forgotten the dress code for today. Or maybe she just doesn’t care. Or perhaps fifteen is too young to have that ability to shrug your shoulders when you look different from the rest? There is no time in a person’s life as self-conscious as the time spent in high school. Every word is incessantly pondered before it is spoken, every movement practised in front of the mirror at least ten times, all in the span of a single morning. Teenagers notice everything, are all ears and have a sixth sense for when someone’s watching them. So how in the world did Raimond Wouda manage to get these students onto his photos without them hamming it up for the camera, dissolving into giggles or striking macho poses? Wouda’s school photos have been shot from a slightly higher vantage point, so that not one but multiple layers of students fill the frame. The photographer started by climbing up on a small ladder. That didn’t work; he stood out too much. He then got a more than three-metre-high tripod, and placed that in the corridors, halls and canteens of the schools he visited. In the meantime, he had become interested in much more than just the area around the lockers. As far as he was concerned, anyplace the students could do as they liked without being reined in by adults produced interesting images.
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His camera stood on the tripod; Wouda himself stood on the ground with a remote control in his hand. This way of photographing worked well. Wouda now more or less blended in with the crowd. And he became better and better at assessing the situations; he learned to see through the camera’s eye without actually using the viewfinder. In the end, he kept this up for three years. For three years he regularly moved among high school students. He stood in the middle of the commotion and observed these 12 to 18year-old children. He saw waterfalls of long, dark hair – and made prints. He saw black students at white schools and white students at black schools – and clicked the shutter. He saw the surreptitious glances, dreamy expressions and good-natured scuffles. And he kept on taking pictures, sometimes as many as five in the space of two minutes. He saw too the big differences between little boys who’d just arrived from primary school and those who’d already been around a while, so clearly shown in the photo he took of the canteen in Scholengemeenschap Tabor I, Hoorn (2006). In the foreground six little boys sit in a row, like twittering birds on a washing line. They are absorbed in conversation, sipping their cartons of multi-fruit drinks with a straw. Their packed lunches were undoubtedly prepared by their mothers,
Shipdock – Shipyard – Dock III, 2001 © Raimond Wouda
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who probably also laid out the day’s clothing on their beds that morning. One of the boys is wearing spectacles and wiping his nose on the sleeve of his pullover. It’s an endearing image. And what a contrast with the older boys behind them, seated at a canteen table. They’re drinking high-energy drinks from plastic bottles, wear gel in their hair and have chosen their own outfits. Once they, too, were so little, the hormones not yet racing so furiously through their bodies as now. But that’s long been forgotten. A high school must be paradise for a photographer who’s always been interested in groups and social relationships between people. Or, even more fitting, in the social landscape. Because in Raimond Wouda’s photos, the feeling of space and spaciousness is not as important as the people who occupy that space. It seems as if what Wouda wants to say is that the space actually provides the conditions for specific human interactions. Like an omniscient storyteller, he chooses a higher vantage point while photographing, which gives him an overview of everything going on, and at the same time allows him to keep his distance. In 2003 Wouda published Sandrien, with photographer Henk Wildschut. The book is a photographic reportage of a chemical tanker which in 2001 had been under embargo in the harbour of Amsterdam for three years and her Indian crew, who had long been confined to the ship. By that time the vastness of the harbour area had already started to exert its influence on Wouda. Nevertheless, between 1998 and 2001 he made a documentary series about Tuindorp Oostzaan, a small community in Amsterdam. Although regarding subject matter the project was fully in keeping with Wouda’s interest in identity-determined human behaviour, subjects and photographer were in intensely close proximity. The photographer says he will never again make a reportage in this way. >
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And he’s been true to his word. Recently Wouda, with Henk Wildschut, again turned to a beloved subject: the water. This year the two photographers produced the book A’DAM DOC.k, about the North Sea canal and the Amsterdam harbours. While Henk Wildschut portrayed the harbour workers, Raimond Wouda enthusiastically took on the role of topographer. With a large-format camera he concentrated on panoramic views in which people and their activities seem reduced to insignificant ant-like behaviour among the immense cranes and ships. But make no mistake: these ‘unimportant’ people with their codes of conduct and group patterns are crucial to the appearance of the landscape. Viewed from that angle, Wouda’s school scenes are a continuation of that same photographic process. It’s true that the photographer was literally less able to take his distance as in those long shots, but he still worked like an ornithologist carefully and unobtrusively researching bird behaviour in the field. The environment, the public space of the school building, determines the behaviour of the pupils who wander about within it, and at the same time their movements determine the space in which they find themselves. The pupils stake out their territory with tables and chairs, or with their backs on which large bags function as protective shells. Groups with the same type of clothing form impenetrable fortresses for outsiders. And all of this is often clearly revealed in just one photograph.
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Raimond Wouda’s reserved manner of photographing creates a democratization of the events within the frame. Everything in the photo is equally important: there is no one single focus. The photographer does not want to direct the viewer’s eye; even less does he want his photos to make personal and political pronouncements about what can be seen in them, even though education is quite a hot topic at the moment. That doesn’t mean that Raimond Wouda is mute. The image (not included in this portfolio) of a Muslim girl lost in thought, dressed all in white, alone among her boisterous classmates, none wearing headscarves, speaks volumes. Initially Wouda found this photo too anecdotal, but he ultimately decided to include it in the series. In other photos as well these kinds of storylines can be found, open to broad interpretation by the viewer. What lingers on in the mind after seeing Raimond Wouda’s school photos is a feeling that the series balances on the edge between tenderness and – maybe the best word here is unmasking. The viewer recognizes him or herself, sees their own behaviour from the past: the bravura which served as protection, the so-called independence and individuality which ironically could only be attained through uniformity in dress and hairstyle. White school, black school – teenage behaviour is virtually the same everywhere – an awkward fumbling at the lockers. Raimond Wouda’s capturing of it is quite an achievement. +
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JR Portrait of a Generation
Pierre de la galère, La Forestière, Clichy-sous-Bois (detail)
The hill, Les Bosquets, Montfermeil
Place des Husler, B.23/24, La Forestière, Clichy-sous-Bois
Byron, 29 years old, born in N’Djamena (Chad), La Forestière, Clichy-sous-Bois, B.6, graphic artist
Omar, 22 years old, born in Montfermeil, Les Bosquets, Montfermeil, B.5, restaurateur
Ladj Ly as seen by JR, CitĂŠ des Bosquets, Montfermeil
Koko, 20 years old, born in Bondy, La Forestière, Clichy-sous-Bois, B.24, unemployed
Goudron, 25 years old, born in Paris, Les Bosquets, Montfermeil, B.12, merchant
Dealing area, Les Bosquets, Montfermeil
Les Bosquets, Montfermeil
Zid and Ladj, Les Bosquets, Montfermeil
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JR
An undercover photographer, engaged artist and self-described ‘activist’, French photographer and street artist JR turns his photos into huge posters that he illegally pastes on the streets in cities world wide. Using a camera he found in the Paris Metro, he turns the city streets into enormous open air photo galleries, confronting passersby with up close and personal portraits of youths from the banlieues, as well as Israelis and Palestinians. JR feels as comfortable in the bourgeois neighbourhoods of cities like New York and London as he does in the urban ghettos of his native Paris or the favelas of Brazil, all the while using his photographs to spark debate and raise questions about prevailing stereotypes. JR has published three photobooks so far, My Street Journal; 28 millimètres. Portrait of a Generation (with a foreword by Vincent Cassel) and Face2Face (published in June 2007 by Editions Alternatives). He exhibited his huge posters on the outside walls of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and at the Hotel
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de Ville in Paris in 2006, among other places. In 2007 his work is presented in a special installation at Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, curated by Anneloes van Gaalen. JR’s website www.jr-art.net is constantly updated with new photos of his work on the streets and presents more information about his projects and (upcoming) exhibitions in Germany, Italy, France and the US.
Anneloes van Gaalen is a freelance writer and curator. She has written for a variety of magazines including Wired, Dazed & Confused, i-D, Soma and 34. She’s editor-in-chief of le cool magazine Amsterdam and has (co-)curated several exhibitions, including Street Art & Urban Painting at the GEM, The Hague.
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For Everyone To See ~ The Unauthorized Exhibitions of JR
by Anneloes van Gaalen
His story reads like a novel. At just 25 years old French photographer and street artist JR owns the biggest gallery in the world, exhibiting posters of his work freely and illegally in the streets of cities worldwide. From the bourgeois neighbourhoods of New York and London to the ghettos of Paris and Brazil and even the Separation Wall in Jerusalem: all have been graced with the works of this prolific Frenchman, whose interest in photography was sparked after he found his first camera on a Parisian subway. JR’s early photography career was one of trial and error. Armed with his newfound camera, he joined his graffiti friends on their nightly guerilla excursions. But rather than simply photograph the tags, as was common in the graffiti scene of the time, JR captured the taggers in action and the environment they worked in. ‘When I used to tag I enjoyed leaving my mark on truly unique and special places. I loved the cityscapes we discovered while tagging on rooftops and subway tunnels. I wasn’t the most talented graffiti artist to begin with and found
4.12 a.m., Collage at the Cité des Bosquets, Montfermeil © JR / jr-art.net, 2006
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the environment that we worked in more interesting than the actual tagging itself and so I bought a roll of film and started to photograph my friends in action.’ He eventually took his camera on the road for a tour of European street art, tracking down the people who speak to the rest of the world through the messages they leave on the walls of the urban jungle. The result of JR’s trip – a photographic journal documenting the world’s most prominent street artists – was released under the name My Street Journal. The decision to take his photographs to the wall and paste posters of his pictures on the city walls, was a rather pragmatic one. Faced with friends who on the one hand wanted copies of his photos and on the other had limited financial means, JR made cheap photocopies of his photographs, which he handed out to his friends. The remainder of the copies he pasted on the street. The reactions to the works were strong and enthusiastic, which encouraged JR to continue to illegally paste the streets of his home city of Paris, turning the public domain into his own personal gallery space and grabbing the attention of people who are not necessarily museum visitors or art lovers. ‘It probably has to do with my graffiti background, but I enjoyed taking something very conventional like photography and pasting my work illegally and anonymously in the streets for everyone to see.’ From 2004 on JR embarked on the 28 millimeters project, the first part of which – Portrait of a Generation – made the front page of The New York Times. The 28 millimeters project is JR’s vision of contemporary photography: the self-taught photographer aims to fight clichés and break stereotypes by incorporating those same stereotypes into his work.
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For the first part of the 28 millimeters project, JR turned his camera on the banlieues. Long before the now infamous riots and long before global media decided to turn their attention to the Paris ghettos, JR was already working in these desolate urban spaces of the French capital. In 2004 he took his camera and pasted materials to the Cité des Bosquets in Montfermeil. Introduced to the French ghettos by some of his friends, JR began documenting daily life in the banlieues. The results of his photographic efforts were illegally pasted on the grey concrete high rises that dominate the skyline in these quarters. JR recalls: ‘A friend of mine was filming me pasting some photos in his neighbourhood when the locals came up to me. They wanted to know what I was doing and wanted to be in the picture as well. When I saw my friend a few days later I gave him the pictures to show to the people back in his neighbourhood. Because they loved it so much, they
gave me their trust and I came back to take some more pictures and then the idea came to me: all the buildings are so big and so fucked up why not liven the place up a bit?’ Ten pictures were turned into enormous posters, which were pasted on the concrete walls of buildings in the Cité des Bosquets. ‘The opening of this outdoor exhibition was held without any cocktails or such, it was all about the art on the walls. I was interested to see if the Parisian people would be willing to travel a bit to see this photographic exhibition. Unfortunately, on the day of the opening there were tons of TV crews and all kinds of members of the press, but very few real visitors: people are just really afraid of coming to these ghettos. And so the works really prompted the question: How far would you go for art?’ Following his first photographic endeavor in the banlieues, JR embarked on the Portrait of a Generation project, which had him turning the camera on some of the actual rioters. Armed with a 28 millimeter lens, JR shot up close and personal portraits of kids from the Clichy and Montfermeil neighbourhoods. Kids who up to then were only known as the hoodie-wearing rioters that featured in news bulletins worldwide. JR’s portraits of these youngsters showed the other side of a troubled generation: young adults and kids making funny faces and playing with prevalent stereotypes. ‘After the riots I decided to shoot some portraits of these kids from the Clichy and Montfermeil hoods,’ says JR, ‘We always see them on TV in hoodies, starting fires and making trouble. By shooting these very up and close portraits I’m giving these kids a face. But I didn’t want to make it too serious, which is why they are making crazy faces, making them look like these alien, extraterrestrial beings. Of course the irony is that people in Paris really treat these guys as if they were E.T. himself!’ >
Cleaning of 28 millimeters – Portrait of a Generation on the walls of the Espace Blancs-Manteaux, Paris, April 2006 © JR / jr-art.net, 2006
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Besides pasting large-scale pessters of his photographs on the grey concrete high rises of the banlieues, JR also took his portraits to the more bourgeois areas of Paris. This illegal project became ‘official’ when the outsized pictures of Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois youth were displayed on the walls of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) and the square of the Hotel de Ville in Paris. Following the success of Portrait of a Generation, JR embarked on the second part of the 28 millimeters project. This time the Frenchman turned his attention to the Middle East. For his Face 2 Face project JR once again took out his 28 millimeter lens and shot portraits of both Palestinians and Israelis doing the same job. The portraits were pasted on both sides of the Wall of Separation / Security Fence as well as in eight other Palestinian and Israeli cities. The result was the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever. ‘In 2005 my friend Marco and I met for the first time and decided to travel to the Middle East to figure out why Palestinians and Israelis couldn’t find a way to get along. While travelling through a number of Israeli and Palestinian cities, we didn’t speak much. All we could do was look at this world, this holy place of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in total amazement. In the end we came to the conclusion that there is really very little difference between the Israelis and their Palestine brothers: they look the same, they speak almost the same language, they’re like twin brothers raised in different families. It’s so obvious to us, but unfortunately they don’t see it, which is why we decided: we must put them face to face, then they will realize. In the end, I hope that this project will contribute to a better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians,’ says JR. ‘Today, Face2Face is necessary. Within a few years, we will come back for Hand in Hand.’
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With his 28 millimeter lens, JR changes some basic rules. In his work the photographer is hidden, he does not give any answers or solutions but instead leaves room for interpretation. His work raises more questions than it answers. By asking his subjects to pose in front his 28 millimeter lens and make faces, rather than simply smile, JR turns his subjects into actors. Passers-by look at them not for who they are but for what they are doing and expressing. According to JR the message is embedded in the faces, in the expressions they portray. And it is up to the spectator or passer-by to actively participate in the work and decide for themselves what message the pictures convey. JR is currently imagining new ways of exhibiting, always in urban areas, where the choice of streets and locations must reveal the meaning of the pictures themselves. He plans to continue with his unauthorized exhibitions and is currently working on the third part of the 28 millimeters project in the favelas of Brazil. As far as JR is concerned there are a lot more clichés to capture, stereotypes to break down and questions to ask, and the streets remain the perfect outlet for such an undertaking. +
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Lauren Greenfield Thin
Aiva, 16, from Atlanta, Georgia, on her first day at the Renfrew Center for the treatment of eating disorders.
Shelly, 25, from Salt Lake City, Utah, on her first day of treatment. A psychiatric nurse, she admitted herself to Renfrew after 10 hospitalizations. She arrived with a PEG feeding tube that had been surgically implanted in her stomach.
Shelly holds open a page of her journal written when in treatment at Renfrew.
Shelly holds up a coffin she made in art therapy as a memorial to her now-removed PEG feeding tube. She says she misses “Peg�.
Shelly and her fiancĂŠe Hoyt, 29, shop for groceries in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Shelly, in front of her mother’s home in Salt Lake City, one year after leaving treatment at Renfrew. She lost 17 pounds after discharge and underwent electric shock therapy to treat her depression.
Shelly tries on her wedding dress at a bridal store in Salt Lake City, two weeks before her wedding. In the last three months, Shelly lost weight and had to order a new dress in a smaller size and get three alterations. After her honeymoon, Shelly had to go back on a feeding tube.
Shelly smokes on the porch of her apartment in Salt Lake City, 14 months after her discharge from Renfrew. She had to get a feeding tube again because of her weight loss.
Emily, 19, and Lacy, 18, hold Sarah, 26, in their room. For some of the residents, the friends made in treatment are their first close relationships with other women.
In Mindful Eating therapy session, residents have to eat ‘fear food’ such as Pop-Tarts, doughnuts, or candy bars and then discuss their feelings.
Shantell, 28, a former model from Delray Beach, Florida, has hundreds of scars from self-inflicted cuts.
Wendy, 20, from Boynton Beach, Florida, in her room. She has self-inflicted cuts all over her arms and legs.
Nurse Kandi prepares the patients’ medications on the day before Christmas.
Brittany writes in her food journal in the cafetaria. Patients fill out forms after each meal so their nutritionist can see how eating affects their mental state.
Brittany, 15, from Cape Coral, Florida, stands next to her body tracing in art therapy. She has written words on the drawing to express her feelings about her image.
Excerpt from Lauren Greenfield’s THIN, published by Chronicle Books/Melcher Media, and available at www.amazon.com. © Lauren Greenfield / VII / Courtesy of Reflex New Art Gallery, Amsterdam. For information about the HBO film THIN, go to www.thindocumentary.com
Aiva, 10 weeks later, on her last day of treatment.
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Lauren Greenfield
Lauren Greenfield (USA, 1966) is considered a preeminent chronicler of youth culture as a result of her groundbreaking projects Girl Culture and Fast Forward and most recently, Thin. Thin is Greenfield’s first feature-length documentary film (HBO) and a companion photography book (Chronicle Books, 2006). The documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006. It aired on HBO on November 14, 2006 and has been seen by millions of Americans. The book was honoured in the 2007 Photo District News Annual book and photojournalism categories. Thin is also a travelling museum exhibition that debuted at The Women’s Museum in Dallas, Texas in February, 2007 and will travel through 2010. Lauren Greenfield graduated from Harvard in 1987. Her photos have been regularly published in The New York Times Magazine, Time, Elle, and American Photo and have won many awards. Her photographs have been widely exhibited and are in many museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco
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Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the ICP in New York. Greenfield’s website, www.laurengreenfield.com received the website award in PDN’s 2007 Photography Annual. She is a member of the VII Photo Agency, an international photographic cooperative, and is represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles and Reflex New Art Gallery in Amsterdam.
Max Houghton is features editor for Ei8th magazine and part-time lecturer in photojournalism at Westminster and Roehampton Universities. She is based in Brighton, UK, and also writes about photography and the media on a freelance basis for a variety of international publications.
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Disappear Here
by Max Houghton
‘[T]he most truthful way of regarding illness […] is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking.’ ~ Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 1978.
The directness of Lauren Greenfield’s gaze, as she documents daily life in Renfrew, a Florida clinic for women with eating disorders, holds no truck with metaphor. She doesn’t cast around for shadows, mirrors or dark tunnels within which to frame her subjects. For Greenfield, as for the young women, the body is the focus. In many ways Thin is a natural progression for VII photographer Greenfield, following on from the acclaimed Girl Culture, and its predecessor Fast Forward. With the first instalment of what she now refers to as ‘the body project’, Greenfield delivered a sharp, prescient take on girls growing up in the shadow – and thrall – of Hollywood (Greenfield’s own back yard), and how the idiosyncratic mores of Tinsel Town affect, indeed accelerate, that process. She then broadened her horizons for what was to become her second book, undertaking an odyssey in pursuit of ‘girl culture’ across the USA, exploring how the female body reflects society’s conflicting messages, revealing through honed
midriffs and honeyed cleavages how it has become the prime focus of identity. In the accompanying essay, she wrote of how ‘the female body has become a palimpsest on which many of our culture’s messages about femininity are being written and rewritten.’ It was when she photographed a young woman called Erin at a clinic in Coconut Creek, Florida, that a seed was sown. In Girl Culture, we see two harrowing photographs of Erin, one showing her pale, disoriented, being helped onto a set of scales backwards in a process called blind-weighing; another a close-up of the numerous self-inflicted cuts to her belly. As well as the candid photographs, one of Greenfield’s great strengths is marrying pictures and words to create an effective camera lucida. Erin spoke frankly about cutting: ‘Most of my cuts are on my lower belly. It took me a long time to figure out why. First of all, I could hide them. Secondly, I just hated being a woman. It brought me nothing but pain. Everything that represents being a woman is in your pelvic area. It’s where your uterus is. So I didn’t feel sorry for making scars on it, because it was just like bringing the scars to the outside. Now they’re visible.’ The image of Erin mounting the scales is one of the opening images of Thin. In choosing to turn her lens to the subject of anorexia nervosa and its close relative bulimia nervosa, we might at first assume this is Greenfield commenting on the sickness of a society that encourages extreme dieting in the never-ending quest for ideal beauty. But her premise, and, further, her understanding of the disorder are both subtler and more rigorous than that. In immersing herself in the intense, all-female atmosphere at Renfrew to make a feature length documentary for American TV station HBO, also called Thin, as well as to capture images for the accompanying book, Greenfield has penetrated the dark heart of this most insidious of mental illnesses.
Morgan and Lisa, both 13, during Spring Break, Sanibel, Florida, from: Girl Culture © Lauren Greenfield / VII
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To achieve this multi-faceted project, Greenfield has not prioritized the photographs in Thin. These are static images. While the aesthetic remains considered and artful, it lacks the dynamism and energy that hallmarked earlier work. Yet this is scant criticism, in fact it is testament to Greenfield’s unflinching integrity as a photographer. She did not seek to make art, to eroticize, or to frame the girls as the fashion models whose bodies too often resemble theirs. Nor did she spend hours composing each picture, indicated perhaps by her switch to a digital camera for the first time. As suggested earlier, she did not seek to create layers of meaning. The body, the face: this is the narrative, not the photograph. These are the girls and this is the illness. Rarely do we get a glimpse of anything else beyond the body, or at least not anything that matters. Even the mountains don’t matter. All focus is on the body: Shelly’s soulful eyes, arms folded across her long slender body in the grounds of Renfrew. Shelly’s soulful eyes, arms folded across her long slender body outside her mother’s house. Shelly’s body with its feeding tube inserted into the stomach. We notice fleetingly a bejewelled piercing adorning her belly button. She describes the invasive surgical procedure – her father’s suggestion – as the worst pain she ever felt. But she soon found it had its advantages, as easy access to her stomach: ‘I could just flex my muscles in
a certain way and stuff would come out, or I would just take a syringe and suck things out, which is totally disgusting, I know.’ We get to know Brittany’s 15-year old body, yet our view of a petite young girl is not hers, judging by her body tracing. Brittany sees a stocky, thunder-thighed gorilla in the mirror. ‘Thinking of Lindsey Lohan and Mary-Kate Olsen – all the other girls skinnier than you,’ she doodles, in her childish script. Her ideal weight, we learn, would be 60 pounds. Brittany and her mother frequently become locked in a cycle of competitive skinniness, a debilitating kind of co-dependency more usually seen in twins. A particularly dark evocation of this phenomenon was played out by Dutch twins Liesbeth and Angelique Raeven, who although painfully, skeletally thin, avoided the term ‘anorexic’ in the making of their video art installation Wild Zone 1 and 2, shown amid some controversy at London’s ICA, under their unified name L.A. Raeven. Often, however, it is at Renfrew that close friendships are formed with other girls for the first time. We sense an intimacy in an image of four girls engaged in horseplay, and suddenly we are in the natural habitat of the young American female: the slumber party. The echo of an image from Fast Forward of two sisters frolicking with another friend in a Malibu bedroom haunts this one. The stark caption, however, reminds the viewer that physical exertion is not permitted at Renfrew. Even less fun is to be had, it seems, in the Mindful Eating therapy session. Polystyrene cups are, after all, tastier than Pop-Tarts. When we stare at images of Shelly, Brittany or the others, we are not looking at vain creatures whose dieting went a little too far one day. We are looking at a voracious mental illness that affects 1 in 7 American women; one of the few that has a visual component. While the beauty industry in general supports the concept of keeping
Mijanou and friends spending their Senior Beach Day at Will Rogers State Beach in Los Angeles, from: Fast Forward © Lauren Greenfield / VII
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women in a state of permanent dissatisfaction with their own bodies, the complex psychopathology of tipping over into the abyss of an eating disorder (ED) is triggered by other factors. Greenfield is careful not to offer easy answers. Family break-up alone is not ‘the cause’ of anorexia. However, one dark theme recurs frequently: Shelly, Quinn, Shantell and Brittany’s mother, Ann Marie, herself possessed with a fierce eating disorder, all mention or allude to sexual abuse in childhood or rape in their testimonials. More than anything, we learn, EDs are all about gaining control and avoiding pain. This is no freak show of America’s thinnest women; it is an exploration of a territory every woman is capable of entering; a place every woman fears. Integral to Greenfield’s project are essays in the book by pre-eminent psychiatrists and eating disorder experts. Dr David Herzog writes on the truths and consequences of EDs and Dr Michael Strober sets out a realistic approach to eventual recovery. Some hope is offered in Thin, as we witness the transformation in 16-year-old Aiva over ten weeks of treatment. Her cheeks flesh out, her stomach swells slightly, probably to her own abject horror. Joan Jacobs Brumberg, whose research provided clarity and context for Greenfield as she completed Girl Culture, answers those who dismiss EDs as the preserve of the wealthy: ‘Ano-
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rexia nervosa and bulimia both flourish in cultures of plenty where food is abundant. In this kind of society, the appetite is not just about hunger. Instead, it becomes a voice, a way to say something about the self, especially among women.’ In addition, Greenfield’s website has become, in part, a hub for eating disordered women and, further, she has produced an educational resource package for parents. Thin is truly a work of ‘concerned’ photography, yet concerned photography does not usually look like this. Even on the VII website, Greenfield’s work stands out. While her esteemed colleagues photograph global warfare in all its guises, Greenfield documents a war on the self, in the form of slow suicide. Here we do not find ‘the other’ through the lens; in Thin, as in previous books, Greenfield affirms an affinity with her subjects. She outs herself as a sometime compulsive dieter, identifying closely with Alisa, as she recounts trying on ten different outfits of a morning, with no heed to fashion, nor season, but simply to an outfit’s slenderising possibilities. Greenfield is acutely aware of her own role within the media, not just as a photojournalist, but also as an occasional fashion photographer. Yet it is this selfawareness, coupled with Greenfield’s honesty about her own relationship with her body as a younger woman, which ensures Thin is never voyeuristic or hypocritical. Greenfield does not seek to represent all women with EDs, nor supply simplified explanations of why the conditions are so prevalent in young women in affluent cultures. The women we get to know so intimately in Thin are not archetypes. This specificity is evident also in Greenfield’s insistence that captions appear imprinted on the photographs. That Greenfield has drawn inspiration from the likes of Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander is no surprise. She has taken notice of a group of people whose life experience is relatively marginal and also frighteningly misunderstood much of the time. She also admires Brett Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero, which certainly breathes its spirit into Fast Forward. Like Clay, the central character, there is a sense that Greenfield believes the American Dream has ended where it should have begun, way out west. Los Angeles, as it appeared in Greenfield’s first book, seemed a microcosm of all the neuroses of an affluent, fame obsessed, inward-looking culture. The motif of Less Than Zero was a roadside sign, misinterpreted by Clay, reading ‘Disappear Here’. In Thin, Greenfield, the historian of American girlhood, has paid attention to the damaged young women who also want to disappear. Her devastatingly truthful photographs, indeed her whole assiduous body of work may help them and others like them not to. +
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Oliver Sieber J_Subs
Fukatsu, Osaka 2006
Akane, Osaka 2006
Takao, Osaka 2006
Jimmy B (Yuji), Osaka 2006
Eiji, Osaka 2006
Izumi, Osaka 2006
Johnny Garage, Osaka 2006
Masumi, Tokyo 2006
Fire, Osaka 2006
Billy, Osaka 2006
O.T., Osaka 2006
Shige, Osaka 2006
Keiko, Tokyo 2006
Kunito, Osaka 2006
Akie, Osaka 2006
Joker, Osaka 2006
Tanuma, Tokyo 2006
Atsuhito, Tokyo 2006
Chica, Tokyo 2006
Sayuri, Tokyo 2006
Yoshito, Osaka 2006
Clashdog, Osaka 2006
Takeshi, Tokyo 2006
Takuya, Osaka 2006
Takumix, Osaka 2006
King J, Osaka 2006
Take, Osaka 2006
Namie, Osaka 2006
Taxx, Osaka 2006
Chigu, Osaka 2006
Sing o, Osaka 2006
Nozomi, Osaka 2006
Bootboy, Osaka 2006
Mizuho, Osaka 2006
O.T. (Ping), Osaka 2006
O.T. (Psycho), Osaka 2006
O.T. (Spiky), Osaka 2006
Takeshi, Osaka 2006
Emi, Osaka 2006
Shy Boy, Osaka 2006
Mayumi, Osaka 2006
Yoshinoti, Osaka 2006
Kiyoshi, Osaka 2006
Shingi, Osaka 2006
Takehiro, Osaka 2006
Green, Osaka 2006
Katsuhiro, Osaka 2006
Kim, Osaka 2006
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Oliver Sieber
Oliver Sieber (Germany, 1966) studied photography in Bielefeld and Düsseldorf. Since 1999 he has worked with Katja Stuke on Frau Böhm, a photo project in the form of a magazine, see www.frau-boehm.de. Sieber’s work usually takes the form of series and he is fascinated by the subject of identity and the phenomenon of young people and their subcultures. This led to the series SkinsModsTeds, B-Boyz B-Girls, 11 Girlfriends and Boy Meets Girl. In 2006 he spent time in Japan for an artist in residence programme, where he made the series J_Subs as well as Character Thieves, for which he photographed young people dressed up as their favourite Manga characters. Over the past few years exhibitions of his work have been held at, among others, the Photographers’ Gallery in London, the Photographische Sammlung
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SK/Stiftung Kultur in Cologne, the National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen, the Photo Espana festival in Madrid and recently Yoursgallery and Gallery Pryzat in Krakow, Poland. Sieber has published a number of books, the latest based on an exhibition at the Leopold Hoesch Museum in Düren of the series Die Blinden (The Blind). For more information about his work see www.os66.de.
Christoph Schaden is an art historian, lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Nuremberg, publicist and co-founder of Schaden Publishers in Cologne. He lives and works in Cologne.
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Anja, Düsseldorf, 1999, from: SkinsModsTeds © Oliver Sieber
Do it as perfect as possible
by Christoph Schaden
Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. ~ Bob Dylan It wasn’t a record she was handling. It was a fragile soul inside a glass bottle. ~ Haruki Murakami The code decides. Who recognizes each other and who does not, who is let into the group and who is left out depends solely on the code. The decision is made within seconds, even before an encounter takes place: outfit, style, make-up, accessories, tattoos, hairstyle, facial expression. In the game of signs, these constitute the basic information that does not create a reliable platform until it has been placed in a semantic framework, enabling one to dependably categorize one’s opposite number as a potentially suitable contact. This process of visual recognition is similar to a systematic scanning process, during which individual features are first singled out and then reassembled – much like the selective inclusion of photographs on Wanted Persons posters. The question underlying this decoding process is as simple as it is complex, as superficial as it is existential: ‘Who am I in relation to the others, and who are the others in relation to me?’ Finding identity. Even today one may still detect the real motor that drives humans in the modern age in this widely used, abused and outworn theory. Its burning glass is known to be called youth. In his
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Mici, Düsseldorf, 1999, from: SkinsModsTeds © Oliver Sieber
essay ‘Aussichtslose Unabhängigkeiten’ (Hopeless Dependencies), the art historian Oliver Zybok points out that more than ever before, the concept of identity is bound to that of alterity. The issue is ultimately nothing less than differentiation, role playing, and self-discovery. According to Zybok, this is why the concept of identity, which is arduously struggled for during adolescence, represents a social reality that is continuously produced through the experience and interaction of individuals. ‘Identity is apparently both things at once: the anticipated expectations of the others and the individual’s desire.’ 1 Very early on the American social philosopher George Herbert Mead derived from this a notion of self that takes this highly ambivalent impulse into account. He distinguishes between a me, which includes the attitudes and expectations adopted from others, and an I, which holds ready the individual responses and reactions to others’ expectations. Youth means nothing less than to position oneself in the field of tension between me and I. J_Subs A picture of Keiko. Her gaze consciously glides past the viewer with the deliberate effect that she can be intensely observed. When looking at the photograph, a scanning process imperceptibly begins in order to make out the numerous set pieces of dress, pose and person. Dark brown almond-shaped eyes, turquoise eye shadow, self-confidently applied red lipstick carefully coordinated with the color of the ribbon in her hair, which in turn crowns the ponytail barely visible on the top of her head. The colour iconography has been skillfully balanced between artificial bleachedness and a bright shade of red, between coolness and Eros, between expectation and desire. A triangle of bangs falls over her forehead, underpinned by lightly plucked eyebrows, the lines of which gently taper toward the temples. Her outfit,
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Andreas, Düsseldorf, 1999, from: SkinsModsTeds © Oliver Sieber
too, pays tribute to the staging of the self. A bomber jacket with a spread collar, opened to a V-shape, reveals a leopard skin shirt. Finally, a clef and two red dice hang from silver chains around her neck. Each of the dice are turned to show a five, with the result that the code suddenly draws a blank. Might it be that the numbers have a deeper meaning? Why is the clef in mirror image? And what is implied by the coloured tattoo on her left ear, which shows two cherries? A picture of Keiko. Analytical consideration gets lost in a pattern of decodification that raises more questions than it answers. The following may once again apply: ‘Who am I in relation to the others, and who are the others in relation to me?’ Since everything in the photograph of the young woman is just right, her self-portrayal seems to be nearly perfectly worked out. To European eyes, however, the recognition categories of me and I prove to be insufficient. What remains is the difficulty of adequately exploring the element of appropriation by Japanese youths of Western subcultures of rock ‘n roll, Teddy-boys, skinheads and punks. The other truth is that the portrait reveals a transcultural identity transfer for which the code does not work. Oliver Sieber, who in 2006 made portrait photographs of Keiko and other youths in Osaka and Tokyo, says that Do it as perfect as possible could be a fundamental maxim for Japanese adolescents. The forty-year-old photographic artist stresses that this is a general characteristic that is a matter of underscoring one’s personal style. Sieber has devoted himself to the photo documentation of youth cultures for
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the past eight years, and along with Katje Stuke, he recently received the Art EX grant from the Osaka Prefectural Government and the Ernst Poensgen Foundation, which enabled him to take portrait photographs of members of the youth scene in large Japanese cities. He tells of their great effort to find a niche for themselves in a strictly hierarchical society. ‘In Japan you can get everything (not only in fashion) and everybody seems to spend a lot of money to get the most perfect style, the most fashionable haircut, and the latest model of any kind of product. Some of the people I met at concerts seemed to have verified every single detail of their outfit.’ He believes that perfectionism is as characteristic as being open to global orientation, the ambiguity factor becoming the dominating principle of style. Oliver Sieber consequently called his series J_Subs. ‘The J_SUB is an actively driven 2-way bass-reflex design’ is one of its definitions in the Web.2 The description may be accurate, although it was a concert by the legendary English punk band UK Subs, which performed in Tokyo last year, that inspired the choice of name for his most recent series of portraits. And so without revealing its code, the abbreviation ultimately reminds us that subcultures have always sought their identity in musical currents. Sieber knows only too well that it is also necessary to mistrust language when one forms opinions about adolescents. Consequently, he provides a minimum of information in each of the titles of the photographs in his series, citing only the subject’s first name or pseudonym: King J, Chigu, Keiko, Akane, Fukatsu, and so on. Identification once again gets stuck halfway, because the intimacy that resonates in the forty-eight names collides with the simple insight that it is not possible to assess the portrayed persons by looking at them. All in all, the emphatic J_Subs portraits by Oliver Sieber primarily represent a crash that exposes the construction of youth as a pure projection surface. >
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Notes: ¹ Oliver Zybok, ‘Aussichtslose Unabhängigkeiten: Kein Ende des Jugendwahns!’, in: Coolhunters: Jugendkulturen zwischen Medien und Markt, eds. Klaus Neumann-Braun and Birgit Richard, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, p. 207. ² http://www.dbaudio.com/en/systems/j_series/j_sub/ accessed on May 21, 2007 ³ Niels Werber, ‘Sex and Pop: On the social use of a regenerative resource’, in: Die Jugend von heute/The Youth Today, eds. Max Hollein and Matthias Ulrich, exh.cat. Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, pp. 116-131, p. 127.
SkinsModsTeds ‘YOUTH… forms an ideal projection surface for Utopias of dedifferentiation of all kinds. Whether young people are viewed with sexual or aesthetic interest, or as a generation to be educated and revolutionized, youth is in any case, understood as a resource whose ability to regenerate itself over and over again ensures that, for centuries not very much has needed to be changed in the social constructions of youth.’ 3 As the Bochum-based literary scientist and mediatician Niels Werber perceptively diagnosed, in that battlefield of projections it becomes necessary to desire and to educate, to use and to take advantage of new young people in a society every ten or twenty years. It is obvious in Oliver Sieber’s series that, at the visual level, his photos follow a sensitive impulse to again force back these socially formulated instrumentalizing and demanding projection surfaces in favor of questioning the individual personality. Back at the turn of the millennium, Sieber produced SkinsModsTeds, a fifty-three-part portrait series of youths in the retro scene, whom he encountered in the Düsseldorf area and whose outward appearance is reminiscent of rebellious role models of the 1950s and 1970s. The series is an irritating déjà vu and at the same time shows that for those involved, the polar thought structures that characterize the image of youth have long since given way to more complex strategies of localization. Conformity versus rebellion, image versus identity. Individuality versus uniformity may still be the reference parameters. Today, however, there are other motives for dealing with them. The photographer reports that the punk Mici, who lives in Sieber’s hometown of Düsseldorf, had his Mohican shaved off when the hairstyle trend swept over Europe in early 2003. The fear of suddenly becoming mainstream was too great.
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High School Oliver Sieber’s photographs are evidence of a counter-reflex and often of an attempt to find a suitable niche in which to remain authentic and to survive adolescence. It is no coincidence that the portraits contain a certain defensive and melancholy element. As pictures of a person’s head, shoulders, and chest, they make reference to a traditional form of the portrait in painting, which focuses on the individual before a uniformly light-grey background. In his arrangement of the photographs, Sieber follows in the tradition of the English and American high-school yearbooks, which contain rows of pictures of all members of a class in alphabetical order. The comparability factor is built in. Sieber emphasizes, however, that he is not concerned with a typological classification, as was the case for August Sander’s epochal project People of the 20th Century. In Sander’s time the concept of youth was still rudimentary; Cologne’s great photographer limited it to the occasional photograph, a young farmer for instance. According to Sieber, today, in the age of me and I, one has to redirect one’s view toward the individual anyway, and to listen to him or her: ‘In the end, the focus is still on the individual personality, on the individual human being.’ Asked about his preferences, after a slight hesitation Oliver Sieber replied that his favorite occupation is leafing through empty exercise books. He smiles and adds that white sheets simply do us good. +
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Viviane Sassen Flamboya
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Viviane Sassen
First attracted to fashion, Viviane Sassen (The Netherlands, 1972) soon came to realize that her true passion was the creation of images rather than clothes. After a couple of years studying fashion in Arnhem she went on to dedicate herself to photography – first as a student at the Royal Academy in Utrecht before successfully completing a Masters in Fine Arts at the Royal Academy in Arnhem. In 1997 she was ready to start for herself, since when she has alternated between personal projects and fashion photos for Miu Miu, Diesel and SO by Alexander van Slobbe, among others. She also works on commercial assignments and photographed for magazines such as i-D, RE-magazine, Butt and Kutt. In 2002 she released the series Cape Flats, shot in the shantytowns of Cape Town, South Africa. Viviane Sassen is represented by Motive Gallery in Amsterdam, where she had a solo show in 2006. Her work was also exhibited at the Festival International de Mode & de Photographie at Villa Noailles, Hyères, at
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Museum of Photography, The Hague, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum of Modern Art, Arnhem and Chelsea Project Space, London, among other venues. Sassen was nominated for the Thieme Art Award 2007 and shortlisted for the Prix de Rome 2007. The series that she created as entry for the Prix de Rome was shown at Witte de With in Rotterdam. In the summer of 2007 the Museum Jan Cunen, Oss (NL) presents As the Crow Flies, a survey exhibition of her work. A catalogue of the Flamboya series (2003-2006) will be published in the near future.
All images © Viviane Sassen, courtesy Motive Gallery, Amsterdam.
Catherine Somzé (Belgium, 1977) is a freelance art historian and media critic based in Amsterdam. She contributes on a regular basis to Next Level, Tubelight and Actitudes. For more information, see www.cameralittera.org.
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Linda Henda, 2005 © Viviane Sassen, courtesy Motive Gallery, Amsterdam.
To Be Young in Africa
by Catherine Somzé
‘What’s it like to be young in Africa?’ is a question Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen once thought she could answer without the shadow of a doubt – because she herself had been brought up in Kenya. Though her family decided to move back to the Netherlands when she was still a child, her memories of Africa remained vivid, first as images brought on by homesickness and then, later on, as a set of fetishes. In her thoughts, she always carried the barren plateaus of Kenya, the valuable friendship with the children stricken with polio who lived across the street, and the visions of her father who spent his life surrounded by illness in search of a cure for his patients. It was in 2002, the year of her thirtieth birthday, that she set foot on the continent of her childhood – for the first time since what had seemed to be ages and bringing along the nostalgia of passed times and a photo camera. First she travelled to Cape Town, where she made her series Cape Flats (2002), returning to Europe certain that she would soon go back to the continent of her childhood. Since then she has been travelling across southern and East Africa and has come to dismiss her previous ideas about the continent as too reductive and simplistic. Flamboya (2003-2006) refers to the ‘Flamboyant’ tree which blossoms in December, scattering countless deep red-and-orange flowers across the landscape in southern and East Africa. This name
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is the last vestige of an exotic image of Africa, in a body of work that otherwise challenges this long-held conception. The Flamboya photographs shot in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia, indicate the pattern of Sassen’s new way of looking at Africa, devoid of sentimentality, acknowledging through metaphor the challenges and drawbacks of its complex reality. Given Western countries’ colonial past, the technology of photography, touching on the subject of ethnic otherness, carries negative implications difficult to circumvent. One might justifiably ask whether, in these last six decades that have seen former colonies gain their independence, their situation has actually changed at all. It might be argued that our present post-colonial era has seen the advent of new forms of domination – with photography still functioning as a tool of symbolic mastery. The portraiture of difference in the forms it takes today is an apology for poverty (with models always happy despite hardship), a war spectacle (barbarism as the artifice of uncivilized societies) or a lost paradise (illustrating the primitivist fantasy of a more instinctual state of being) which still serves to justify inequalities. Ultimately, visual regimes always bespeak their own exclusionary logic. Many depictions of Africa in popular ethnographic magazines and coffee-table books today present the continent either as a lost Eden or as a place of war, poverty and corruption. Contrary to these stereotypes, no weeping mothers, unnecessarily smiling children or men with guns to trigger mindless empathy or feelings of guilt appear in Sassen’s work. Yet, is it possible to create work that does not in one way or another fall into old modes of thinking? And isn’t representation always a form of empowerment? With such questions in mind Sassen shot her Flamboya photographs. If it wasn’t possible to make any definite statement about any kind of experience at all and if the
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Untitled, 2005 from: Cape Flats © Viviane Sassen, courtesy Motive Gallery, Amsterdam.
(post-)colonial history of photography was betraying her ambitions, then it was the act of doubting itself that was meant to become the object of her photographs. Without giving up figurative means, Sassen went on developing a visual language that questions the ideology underlying the belief in photography’s mimetic power. When Sassen returned to Africa for the first time she had already been working as a photographer for various ‘underground’ magazines. This early work already displays characteristics that were to become the hallmarks of her aesthetic language. Her photographic compositions always involved some form of subtle trompe-l’oeil.For instance, she might simulate presence by absence (enhancing clothes by visually erasing the model wearing them) or blur the boundary between life and death (gloves mistaken for hands). Far from being of purely formal interest, this visual trickery was at the core of her expressive enterprise for it guaranteed the impact of her photographs while challenging binary oppositions such as nature and culture, absence and presence, life and death. Through her African work, the elements of this incipient visual grammar would come to be articulated more firmly as her subject matter came to involve the representation of ethnic otherness. With the help of leaves, cast shadows or even by turning their backs to the camera, Sassen’s models in the Flamboya collection
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anticipate and prevent themselves from becoming the object of the inquisitive gaze of the photographer and any viewers alike. Sassen’s models are cast as individuals aware of the ritual act of being photographed and actively participate in it. This dimension mirrors Sassen’s way of working. Almost none of the individuals featured in her work are professional models, they are simple passers-by met on the street or in other public places. Yet Sassen’s work is not strictly documentary. Rather than being interested in the features of a specific individual, she aims at producing a kind of archetypal image that she composes (she privileges the verb to compose over the more commonly used, but in her case inadequate, to stage). Although most of Sassen’s Flamboya photographs are portraits, none of them allows the viewer easily, if at all, to distinguish the facial features of most of her models. Their identity is symbolically, and sometimes literally, left in shadow. Furthermore, just as the individuals portrayed wear clothes or seem to use their own bodies or natural en-vironments as camouflage, the quantity of descriptive elements in terms of geography and culturally laden props are heavily restricted. This apparent parsimony of visual information is counterbalanced by the use of bright colours and Sassen’s high sensitivity to contrasts and appealing compositions. Although crucial aspects of the living onditions of the individuals portrayed still surface, Sassen’s Flamboya photographs transcend the documentary to attain the realms of metaphor. Lying on the ground in the shadow of a tree, seated behind tree ferns or just standing in the sun in such a way that the excess of light turns their skin into a new kind of reflecting surface, the individuals featured in Sassen’s photographs seem to be awaiting something from which they need to hide, or find protection. Absorbed in thought,
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dedicated to some undefined activity or just sleeping (or are they dying?), they become the actors of open narratives. Whereas each viewer is left alone to decide on the story to be read into each photograph, (s)he will invariably feel invaded by a feeling of unease. Beyond the fact that it is impossible to fix the meaning of the photograph, Sassen’s subjects seem to return our gaze and intimate that they are looking at us rather than the other way around. And ultimately, they do partake in mysterious mises-en-scène whereby their identity becomes a function of their camouflage rather than the result of the photographic registration of their body and facial features. In a very humble way, Viviane Sassen acknowledges the fact that as heavily bound as she feels to Africa, she will never be completely able to break free from her occidental background; that the fears and desires that have enriched the cultural and financial treasury of the West for centuries to the detriment of Africa and other so-called Third World countries cannot have been completely eradicated from her work. Maybe it is so, maybe not. In any case, who will dare to cast the first stone at her? If the technology of photography is condemned to structure the reality of an unequal relationship between those who are empowered to depict and those who are the object of their gaze, Sassen has already proven able to discomfort its discriminatory
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mechanism. By coherently demonstrating the impossibility of capturing the identity of her African models, suggesting that identity is always a kind of camouflage, she has come to reflect on the typical western belief that image-making amounts to meaning-making. Through compositions that dramatize the paradoxical relationship between westerners and the African population, intimating the possibility of a fatal unravelling, she has succeeded in hampering the cycle of knowledge production as an exercise of power. The only certainty pervading us as we keep on looking at her work concerns the ethical response with which one might have confronted life, doubting what one has always taken for granted. Just as Sassen chose to question the comforting dream of an exotic childhood by acknowledging the ambiguities of reality, it is up to us to accept the challenge that constitutes the existence of others. For this would mean allowing them to constitute the real danger and source of unpredicted changes, which only subjects can be the agents of. It would be the death of otherness as a mirror image of one’s own interests and the birth of a truly separate, and therefore unconquerable, entity. +
foam magazine #11 / youth
portfolio
Ryan McGinley Celebrating Life
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Ryan McGinley
List of works (in order of appearance): Untitled (Spitting Apples), 2005 Untitled (Hot Springs), 2005 Raina (Falling, Bridge), 2005 Eric, 2004 Jake (Ocean), 2005 Lily (Black Eye), 2005 Untitled (Nude, Sand), 2005 Untitled (Bungee), 2005 Untitled (Nudes, Van, Horse), 2005 Dakota (Hair), 2004 Tim (Black Eye), 2005 Untitled (Nude, Bicycle), 2005 Untitled (White Sands), 2005 © Ryan McGinley Courtesy Team Gallery, New York Courtesy galerie du jour agnès b., Paris
Ryan McGinley (USA, 1977) started photographing when he was a junior graphic design student at Parsons School of Design in New York, taking pictures of his young downtown Manhattan friends. In 2000 he sent out his self-published book The Kids Are Alright to magazine editors and to artists he admired, which resulted in his first assignment from Index magazine. In 2003, at the age of 26, he was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Whitney Museum in New York. Since that time his intimate, spontaneous portraits of graffiti artists, skateboarders and musicians, most of them part of his own private life, have brought him international recognition. McGinley photographed for many magazines including Vice, Dazed and Confused, Index, i-D, Dutch, Butt and The New York Times Magazine. He exhibited his work widely, including shows at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center/ MoMA in New York, the Rencontres d’Arles festival in France, the Museum of Contemporary Art de Castilla y León in Spain, Kunsthalle, Vienna and at galerie du jour agnès b in Paris. In 2006 galerie du jour
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published the book Ryan McGinley Sun and Health. Earlier this year Team Gallery in New York, who represent McGinley, showed his new series Irregular Regulars. In May 2007 McGinley was awarded Young Photographer of the Year by ICP’s Infinity Awards. Later this year he will have a solo show at Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam and an extensive monograph will be published by Twin Palms Publishers.
Adam Baran is a filmmaker based in New York whose most recent film Jinx! will be airing on the Independent Film Channel in 2007. Adam is also a staff writer for Butt magazine, and his work is featured in the Butt book published in 2006 by Taschen. For more information on Adam’s films and writings see www.adambaran.net.
foam magazine #11 / young
portfolio text At the request of Foam Magazine, writer and filmmaker Adam Baran wrote a text to accompany the work of Ryan McGinley. Inspired by the irresistible feeling of freedom and spontaneity in McGinley’s photos, Baran wrote a personal account in which he looks back on his youth in New Jersey. At that time, the ‘mythical cool people’ pictured in the Polaroids of his friend’s sister represented kids living a dynamic life that seemed to be of a totally different order than his own predictable existence in the suburbs: the life he wished he was living.
Jen’s Fridge
by Adam Baran
I remember my senior prom. It was 1998. I was 17. I wore a shiny tuxedo with a royal blue shirt and a long black tie. I went with my best friend at the time, Rachel. The DJ played Notorious B.I.G., which got everyone – including the school’s resident hippie, who wore Birkenstock sandals with his tuxedo – out on the dance floor. We laughed at him and left early to go party with people we really liked. I was determined to make it a better evening than the previous year after the junior prom, when I had gone to the Tunnel nightclub with a group of friends, wearing a pair of baggy rave pants that I had washed earlier in the day after liberally treating a spaghetti sauce stain on my
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crotch with Tide detergent (bleach included). I didn’t anticipate that when we got to the club the black light inside would turn the stained area neon green, making it appear as though I had compulsively masturbated in this pair of pants on at least eight different occasions. Our first stop for the evening was Rachel’s sister Jen’s apartment, which was located above an Irish pub on First Avenue and First Street. I really liked Rachel, but I confess I liked Jen even more. She was a witty hipster-hater with shades of Parker Posey who hung out at cool bars like Max Fish or Blue and Gold. Her apartment was everything I dreamed of having: a tiny shoebox littered with piles of clothes, cigarette butts, Village Voices, and albums by The Smiths. Most important to me, however, was Jen’s refrigerator, with its Polaroid journal of apartment visitors. Everyone who came to the apartment, new or old, got a fresh picture of themselves taped to the icebox. That was as close as you could get to my definition of cool back then. I scanned the fridge, examining each photo more closely. The people in the photos raised Heinekens, made funny faces, and sometimes mooned the camera. There were guys with Morrissey pompadours. There were scruffy guys in Sonic Youth T-shirts. There were hipster guys who were cute and gay, but not obviously so. It might have been the first time it occurred to me that I could just be the fag I am. The best part was the lower portion of the Polaroid, where you could write anything you wanted. If you’d failed to create an alluring pose, this was your opportunity to contrast it with a cleverly ironic statement. A song lyric usually did the job pretty well. ‘Love, love will tear us apart, again,’ had already been taken, so I wrote, ‘State of
Untitled (Falling, Sunset), 2006 © Ryan McGinley, courtesy Team Gallery, New York
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Emergency, is where I want to be,’ which was a Björk lyric off Homogenic. I kicked myself big time later, thinking of all the much cooler, funnier things I could have written: ‘We are Young. Heartache to Heartache’, or ‘Fire Walk With Me’ or ‘Coffy, baby, sweet as a chocolate bar’. That these lines wouldn’t have made sense to most would have been part of the point, of course. Back in New Jersey, in the suburb that I lived in, my circle was limited by my mobility. The majority of people I knew and hung out with had been my friends for most of my life. Our group would converge daily after school at Rachel’s friend Kim’s house, located on a cul-de-
Untitled (Falling, Sky), 2006 © Ryan McGinley, courtesy Team Gallery, New York
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sac shrouded with overhanging tall leafy trees. Kim’s mom didn’t care if we smoked in the house, which was why we always hung out there. Kim also had a photo wall of friend pictures, but it wasn’t nearly as interesting as Jen’s fridge. It was just hundreds of standard Kodak snapshots arranged at random, covering each wall from end to end. When I looked at the pictures, all I saw was what we were back then, a bunch of not very interesting or dynamic people with little in the way of shared interests besides smoking and rebellion. But Kim didn’t really care about that. She liked having friends, and like most of the girls I knew, taking lots of pictures of them. To her, the photos had life and vibrancy; after all, it was through her eyes that they had been taken. Kim loved taking observation shots. She’d try desperately to wait for a moment when we weren’t paying attention and snap us in what she felt like were our natural states. Most of these pictures showed us just sitting around, huddled together on couches looking bored. We’d become furious with her, knowing that there was no way that she could have made us look in any way fuckable in these photos. It’s weird to me now that I found Jen’s fridge somehow more authentic than Kim’s snapshots. Obviously, in retrospect, I know the fridge was probably a big 1990s cliché. There were probably thousands of hipster kids with retro Polaroid walls littered across the East Village, the Lower East Side and Brooklyn. I’m sure, just as it always works with most trends, that Jen had gone to another apartment that had a Polaroid wall and lifted the idea for her fridge. There’s an old line about how amateurs borrow ideas, while geniuses steal them, but I still can’t make up my mind whether or not it applies here. >
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I hated nostalgia when I was a kid, and I still rarely take pictures of my current friends. It’s too much work, and to my mind, you end up not experiencing the very thing you’re taking the picture of. Sometimes I buy a disposable camera, thinking this will be the day that I take some really great shots, but I almost always end up taking ones of myself in the mirror and never developing the film. The modern equivalent of Jen’s fridge for most kids now is a MySpace page, where you can read witty statements, see likes and dislikes, sexual preference, and everything you would (or wouldn’t) want to know about your friends and your friends’ friends. Everyone thinks their friends are unique, which is why people usually want to take lots of pictures of them, and then collect these pictures, download them, and email them to their cellphones 30 seconds after they’ve been taken. But to me, if you’ve seen one photo of someone else’s friends, you’ve seen them all. What distinguishes them for me? Not much. It’s not that I can’t recognize the aesthetic value of certain photos, or understand the desire to document your memories, so you can look back on them later. I’m a filmmaker, after all, and I did write and direct a short film based on my memories of Rachel and Kim. But I’ve never really been able to fit into a clique of friends. When I look at friend photos, all I see is another group I’ll never be a part of. Of course now I live in the Lower East Side, not too far from Jen’s old apartment. But as usual, I’m late to the party, by about 7 years. Everyone’s moved
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to Brooklyn, and I’m sure that by the time I decide to move out there the mythical ‘cool people’ will have moved somewhere else. Jen moved to Australia a few years ago. I heard at first that she lived on a sort of hippie commune - the idea struck me as so retro and seventies that it spun around and became cool again. She’s got a new circle of fabulous friends and probably a new Polaroid fridge. The idea of being cool is supposed to be about not needing anybody, not needing friends, not caring about what you look like or how you act. Whether you honestly don’t care, or pose and pretend like you don’t, the effect is the same. It’s totally subjective, and probably there are very few truly cool people. But back then, Jen’s fridge was the real deal. It was a document of the comings and goings of a circle of friends I thought I desperately wanted to know. More than that, it was proof that Jen was cool because she knew all those people. I was in awe of that. And in some way, this idea still kicks around in my head from time to time. I’ll never have a Polaroid fridge because in my mind, I’ll never be that cool. +
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books
1
2
Jacob Holdt United States 1970-1975 Jacob Holdt arrived in the US in the early seventies on a stopover but ended
The Helsinki School. New Photography by TaiK
up hitchhiking throughout the country
The Helsinki School, the photograph-
Gerry Badger The Genius of Photography. How photography has changed our lives
ers affiliated with the University of Art
The Genius of Photography has been
that they sent him a camera so he could
interested in presenting his photo-
and Design in Helsinki. The dynamic
published in conjunction with the BBC
send them ‘proof’. From that moment
graphs as art; for him they are first of
approach of professors Jorma Puranen
television series of the same name that
on, Holdt began recording the life and
all teaching materials. Even now, more
and Timothy Parsons have put the
will be broadcast later in 2007. It descri-
suffering of poor – specifically black –
than three decades later, he still tours
new Finnish photography scene on
bes the development of the medium by
America, going on to create one of the
the world with the slideshow and
the international map, by taking part
focusing on the most important events,
most comprehensive and impressive
continues to wage his unremitting
in art fairs such as Paris Photo, and
individuals and images in the history
photographic
the
battle against racism and injustice
by publishing books and organizing
of photography. Starting with the very
American ‘underclass’ since How the
(see www.american-pictures.com). His
exhibitions which have already toured
first photograph, by Joseph Nicéphore
Other Half Lives by his countryman
work was recently ‘discovered’ by the
This is the second book published by
for five years. The politically motivated son of a preacher wrote home to his parents in Denmark about the poverty and degradation he encountered, but they found his stories so hard to believe
documents
of
many European cities since the sum-
Niepce, it ends by looking at the im-
Jacob Riis. Holdt sold his blood at blood
art world, however, and a travelling ex-
mer of 2005. As in the first book, the
plications of the digital revolution,
banks twice a week to finance his
hibition started its tour at the Folkwang
dialogue between the generations is
with
Ghraib.
travels and buy film. He travelled more
Museum in Essen. And now Steidl
a key element and work is presented
Gerry Badger effortlessly links Rineke
than 160,000 km and slept at over 400
published this impressive new edition
from 35 artists who have taught at, at-
Dijkstra’s beach portraits with early da-
different places, ranging from the
of his photographs, Jacob Holdt: United
tended or graduated from this acade-
guerreotypes and Gregory Crewdson’s
shacks of the poorest migrant workers
States 1970–1975. The number of
my, each represented with a short text
images with the nineteenth-century
to the home of the Rockefellers. He
images has been reduced to some 80
by Andrea Holzherr and five pages of
tableaux of Oscar Rejlander. Badger is
accompanied criminals during their
photographs, presented in a classic
images. Some of these artists already
a gifted observer and chronicler who
robberies in ghettos, attended demon-
layout, with the images on the right
have a number of international exhibi-
always manages to identify the speci-
strations, infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan
hand page and broad white margins.
tions and publications to their credit,
fic character and significance of a pho-
and
election
The new edition shows that Holdt is
such as Miklos Gaál, Janne Lehtinen
tograph in a clear and insightful way
rallies. When he returned to Denmark
undoubtedly a gifted photographer.
and Aino Kannisto. The wave of note-
– just as he did for photobooks in the
after five years, Holdt put together a
The photographs lose nothing of their
worthy photography from Finland
pivotal work The Photobook: A History
slideshow from the enormous amount
power in this new format. Indeed, the
– and the broader group of Nordic
(volumes I and II). While the images in
of material he had collected, which he
images come across even more strongly
countries – which has recently sur-
this new book will be generally familiar
presented at schools, town halls and
than they did in the cheaply produced
faced is outstanding and invites reflect-
to adepts, Badger’s quest for the ‘genius’
public spaces in more than a dozen
and rather sloppily laid-out original
ion on its specific characteristics and
of photography – for what is common to
countries, the proceeds going to huma-
editions. Fortunately Holdt’s comments
success, discussed here in interviews
all photographs regardless of their form
nitarian aid organizations. Healso put
on each image – although reduced to a
with the most influential professors at
or the intentions with which they were
together a book that was published in
minimum – have been kept and are
this academy.
made – is truly fascinating and contains
the late seventies in a variety of lan-
included at the back of the book, along
a wealth of apposite observations.
guages. The original edition contains
with an essay by Christoph Ribbat.
images
from
Abu
University of Art and Design/
attended
Republican
more than 800 photos, accompanied by
Hatje Cantz,
Quadrille Publishing,
Holdt’s texts: a combination of travel
Steidl,
ISBN 978-3-7757-1888-2,
ISBN 978-1-84400-363-1,
accounts, agitprop, poems and political
ISBN 978-3-86521-393-8,
232 pp, €35
256 pp, €51,75
essays. It is clear that Holdt was not
192 pp, €32
156
foam magazine #11 / young
books 3
Charlie Crane Welcome to Pyongyang The recent interest among photographers in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is striking but not entirely surprising. This is after all one of the last totalita-
Dutch Eyes: A Critical History of Photography in the Netherlands
rian regimes in the world, and the massive
orchestrated
parades
in
honour of ‘The Great Leader’ Kim Il Sung and ubiquitous propaganda sym-
The publication of this impressive
bols provide particularly fascinating
Albrecht Fuchs
overview was timed to coincide with
subject matter for photographers such
Nearly all of Albrecht Fuchs’ portraits
the opening of the Nederlands Foto-
gives a lavish and comprehensive view
as Andreas Gursky, Mark Edward
have a natural serenity and balance.
museum in Rotterdam and has the
of 150 years of photography in the
Harris and Patrick Swirc. Crane travel-
Fuchs approaches his subjects with
same title as the inaugural exhibition
Netherlands. While the first chapters
led to the DPRK three times in 2005
respect and keeps an appropriate
in the museum’s new housing, the
deal with the earliest period chronolo-
and 2006, working there in close
distance, while photographing them
former ‘Las Palmas’ warehouse. The
gically, the rest of the book is arranged
cooperation with the country’s official
without artifice, using available light.
book – the result of years of prepar-ati-
thematically, with subjects like land-
tourist bureau, which granted him
This book comprises more than 50
on and collaboration between var-ious
scape photography, View of the Other,
and his travelling companion Nicholas
portraits Fuchs has taken over the
(museological) institutions in the Net-
photobooks since World War II and
Bonner unprecedented freedom of
years, principally of subjects from the
herlands – is truly unique in both its
developments since 1960, each being
movement, provided they did not stray
international art scene but also includ-
size and its content. The most recent
treated in separate chapters by specia-
from their subject. Crane’s photos are
ing
such overview appeared in the late se-
list authors. Specific secondary topics
not intended as political criticism or a
Isabella Rosselini, Ennio Morricone
venties and treated Dutch photography
such as particular publishers, individ-
challenge to the regime. He’s chosen
and politician Joschka Fischer – dres-
up to 1975. Since then much has
uals or organizations are discussed
rather to portray Pyongyang and its
sed in running gear and perspiring
changed. The Netherlands now has
briefly in text boxes. With this ambiti-
residents on their own terms, as they
heavily, no doubt in training for his
four specialist photography museums:
ous approach, some overlap is inevi-
appear to an outsider. Crane’s clear,
next marathon. Many of the artists are
the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Foam_
table, as are certain gaps. It is not with-
large-format photos radiate serenity
from Fuchs’ own generation, such as
Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Huis
out reason that the subtitle speaks of ‘a’
and offer a fascinating view of this in-
Sarah Lucas, Wolfgang Tillmans and
Marseille in Amsterdam and the
critical history; after all, there is no
scrutable and over-regulated culture
Thomas Demand, but he also photo-
Museum of Photography The Hague.
such thing as ‘the’ history of Dutch
in which everything and everybody
graphed male ‘giants’ from the inter-
And Dutch photographers such as
photography. The thematic approach,
seems to have a proper place. The
national art scene like Paul McCarthy,
Rineke Dijkstra, Inez van Lamsweerde/
however, does make it possible to reveal
photos are presented as in a tourist
Lawrence Weiner, John Baldessari and
Vinoodh Matadin and Anton Corbijn
a great deal of its diversity.
guidebook, accompanied by short
Mike Kelley – and the unforgettable
background stories based on inter-
Martin
views with official tourist guides.
multiple images are included here.
have made their mark worldwide.
well-known
figures
Kippenberger,
such
of
Indeed, an important impetus to this
Waanders/Stichting Fotografie
publication has been the need to pro-
Nederland, Engl. ed.
vide an historical context for the work
ISBN 978-90-400-8380-8, Dutch
Chris Boot,
Snoeck Verlag,
of this younger generation of photo-
ed. ISBN 978- 90-400-8337-2,
ISBN 978-1-905712-04-5,
ISBN 978-3-936859-59-1,
graphers. In ten chapters, Dutch Eyes
576 pp, €69,95
144 pp, £20
120 pp, €32
157
as
whom
foam magazine #11 / young
books
Tierney Gearon Daddy, where are you? Tierny Gearon usually aims her camera at her own family. In 2001 this led to great controversy, when police demanded pictures of her nude chil4
dren be removed from the I am a Camera show at the Saatchi Gallery. In her most recent project, Gearon concentrates on her mother, who has suffered from mental illness for most of her adult life. Gearon’s photos offer an intimate and piercing look at her mother, who is clearly a humorous,
Face of Fashion
free-spirited woman. One feels that
Face of Fashion is the catalogue from
this is more than simply a document
the exhibition of the same name,
and that Gearon, who during this
which was held until the end of May at
project was pregnant and gave birth to
the
in
her third child, is exploring her com-
London. Curator Susan Bright wanted
plex relationship with her mother.
to show the diverse and innovative
Sometimes this becomes almost un-
nature of contemporary fashion por-
comfortable, when we witness more
traiture, through the work of five
than, as outsiders, we really want to
prominent
photographers:
know. But in the end it’s poignancy
Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott, Corinne
that dominates. The book contains
Day, Steven Klein, Paolo Roversi and
many images of family gatherings in
Mario Sorrenti. All five principally
the countryside, often accompanied
work for magazines, and have photo-
by fancy dress parties, and of the
Bert Teunissen Domestic Landscapes. A portrait of Europeans at home
graphed celebrities such as Madonna,
National
Portrait
fashion
Gallery
mother’s cluttered but still idyllic
Bert Teunissen worked on his Domestic
His project is reminiscent of Raymond
Kate Moss, Brad Pitt and many others.
house. There are also moving images
Landscapes project for more than ten
Depardon’s documentary film trilogy
Two in-depth essays, by Susan Bright
in which the severely withdrawn
years, visiting mainly rural areas in
Profils Paysans, which document a
and Vince Aletti, sketch developments
demeanour that accompanies mental
more than ten European countries. He
disappearing lifestyle in a comparably
in fashion photography since masters
illness is very tangible. Occasionally
photographed people in the houses
insightful manner. In our modern
like H.P. Horst, Cecil Beaton, Richard
this culminates in a storm of con-
they were born and grew up in, in the
world, time-honoured traditions and
Avedon and Irving Penn, and analyze
fusion and despair, especially in a
space where they spent the most of
regional diversity are ruthlessly sacrifi-
changes in attitude to celebrities and
penetrating series of close-up portraits,
their time – usually the kitchen or the
ced to globalization and progress.
glamour. Also included is an interest-
which appear in the book as a sequen-
living room. Teunissen is interested in
Condescending
ing dialogue between Mario Sorrenti
ce. The film documentary Tierney
the architecture as well as the residents;
legislation, for example, now forbids
and actress Julianne Moore, discussing
Gearon: The Mother Project which
he concentrated on houses built long
the curing of hams in the age-old
their collaboration for the famous
premiered in early 2007, follows
before electrification, where the light is
manner. Teunissen estimates that most
shoot that resulted in a 42-page story
Gearon during the three-year period
often exceptional. Time seems to stand
of the 350 houses he visited have since
in W magazine in September 2004.
in which this series was produced.
still, especially in places like Spain and
been demolished.
European
Portugal. The fire in the open hearth is
National Portrait Gallery,
SteidlDangin,
the centre of domestic life, large hams
Aperture,
ISBN 978- 1-85514-383-8,
ISBN 978-3-86521-309-9,
hang drying from the ceiling and mo-
ISBN 978-1-59711-040-2,
232 pp, €52,50
156 pp, € 75
dern comforts are practically unknown.
128 pp, €45
158
Union
foam magazine #11 / young
books
5
Anne-Celine Jager Image Makers, Image Takers. In this book’s 28 interviews, AnneCeline Jaeger sets out to determine just what it is that makes a photograph –
Joachim Schmid Photoworks 1982-2007
and especially a photographer – successful. Sixteen of the interviews feature
well-known
photographers
such as Rineke Dijkstra, William
In recent years we’ve been flooded
Eggleston and Martin Parr –somewhat
with publications and exhibitions of
artificially and randomly divided into
‘found’ and amateur photos. Recently
the categories of Art, Documentary,
in the Netherlands there has even been
Fashion/Advertising and Portraiture.
a special competition for ‘the best
Jaeger asked them how they go about
failed photo’ – a fast-disappearing
their work, how they know when a
phenomenon since the rise of the
photograph is good and what moti-
digital camera – held by Dutch depart-
vates and inspires them. She also inter-
ment store chain (and photo lab)
viewed representatives from the ‘next
HEMA. There are, however, few artists
generation’, including Charles Fréger
who have so consistently and deter-
and Alec Soth. Along with these ‘image
Semâ Bekirovic Koet
minedly dedicated their own work to
makers’, the ‘image takers’ have their
For the small book Koet (the Dutch
Credits
‘vernacular photography’ as Joachim
say. They are divided into Curators
word for ‘coot’, the common water-bird
All images are reproductions of
Schmid. Schmid stopped photograph-
and Gallerists – including curator
that can be found all over Amsterdam)
book covers, unless numbered.
ing in the early 1980s, convinced that
Camilla Brown and gallerist Rudolf
Semâ Bekirovic followed a pair of coots
Credits for the numbered photos:
there are more than enough images in
Kicken – and Agency Directors, Edi-
for months while they were building
1 Palm Beach, dinner party with
the world already, and devoted himself
tors and Publishers, such as photo
their nest. She became fascinated by
lefitst millionaire Bill Gandalls
to an alternative history of photography
editor Kathy Ryan and Magnum’s
the way these birds adapt to the urban
© Jacob Holdt
not found in textbooks and museums.
Bureau Chief Diane Dufour. How do
environment, making use of a wide
2 87-year old woman guarding
This publication offers an overview
they decide which photographer to
variety of unnatural waste materials in
her shack in Phoenix, Arizona
of the various series Schmid has
approach for an assignment or exhib-
their nests. Six weeks long, Bekirovic
© Jacob Holdt
presented in recent years, especially
ition? How do they find new talent and
visited the coot pair twice a day and
3 Construction of the discharge
his two most extensive projects:
what advice would they like to give to
‘fed’ them her personal ‘litter’, things
sluices in the Haringvliet, 1966
Archiv and Bilden von der Strasse.
photographers who are just starting
like family photos, old Christmas cards,
© Aart Klein
The latter is an ongoing project docu-
out? Although answers to the latter
plastic animal figurines and other
4 La Albverca #6, 1/3/2005 12:56,
menting every discarded photograph
question, which recurs in practically
colourful odds and ends. By sticking
© Bert Teunissen, courtesy
Schmid has picked up from the street
every interview, can get a bit predict-
bits of bread to these, Bekorivic enticed
of Aperture Foundation
since 1982, including torn or damaged
able, suggesting that Jaeger’s writing
the coots to carry her personal effects
5 image from: Koet
ones. The monograph accompanies
was targeted a little too much at one
to their nest, which was soon transfor-
© Semâ Bekirovic
a travelling exhibition that started in
particular group of readers, this is
med into a weird and wonderful fanta-
the USA, and will travel from London
nevertheless a highly enjoyable and
sy structure. Bekivoric recorded the en-
to Rotterdam and Umea, Sweden
readable book for for anyone with any
tire process in photos and has published
in 2008.
interest in photography.
them in this small, endearing book.
Photoworks/Tang Museum/
Thames & Hudson,
Veenman Publishers,
Steidl, ISBN 978-3-86521-394-5,
ISBN 978-0-50028662-3,
ISBN 978-90-8690-062-6,
288 pp, €45
£17,95
42 pp, € 15
159
foam magazine #11 / young
back issues
Missed an issue? You can still order back issues of Foam Magazine. The first two editions of Foam Magazine doubled as exhibition catalogues, to be enjoyed by those who had missed the exhibitions or who wanted to
savour the images again in a different context. Since the release of #3, Foam Magazine is no longer linked to the exhibition programme of the museum. Foam Magazine has become an exhibition space in itself. Each edition features a specific theme, which unites six diverse portfolios of 16 pages each.
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foam magazine #11 / young
Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
|
Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam Foam exhibits all genres of photography: fine art, documentary, applied, historical and contemporary. Alongside large exhibitions of established (world) famous photographers, Foam also exhibits emerging young talent in smaller short-term shows. Keizersgracht 609 1017 DS Amsterdam tel +31 20 5516500 www.foam.nl Open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Foam is supported by the VandenEnde Foundation, Stichting DOEN and T-Mobile
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Niagara Falls, New York 2005 Š Mitch Epstein, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne
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Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Mitch Epstein ~ American Work ~
29 June - 19 September 2007
Foam presents recent work by American photographer Mitch Epstein. Over the last thirty years Epstein has emerged as one of America’s leading contemporary photographers. His work reveals a unique talent for unexpected, evocative colour compositions, although he often subverts his own formal perfection with provocative, often troubling subject matter. The exhibition American Work explores Epstein’s fascination with American society by presenting a selection from two major projects. In the first exhibition room are monumental works from Epstein’s ongoing American Power series. In subsequent rooms are photographs and a short film, DAD, from his previous project, Family Business (2000-2003). In American Power Epstein probes the use and abuse of energy in the United States. The images focus, often by implication, on the use of fossil fuels, as well as wind, water and nuclear power. On his travels in the United States, Epstein is frequently stopped and questioned by local police and FBI agents for photographing energy facilities from distant public areas. Although he breaks no laws, he is repeatedly told, under the auspices of Homeland Security, to stop photographing and leave. Epstein’s unease with a police system that upholds corporate law above constitutional law has no doubt added to the disturbing quality of many of his American Power photographs. Epstein explores the very definition of ‘American power’. This title refers not just to the power of the state or American companies; it also refers to the power of the consumer impulse and, even, at times, the
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power of sexuality – references we can see in the images in this exhibition that depict power stations, the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina, and a couple flirting at the edge of Niagara Falls. Moreover, the enormous scale of the prints refers to the power of size. Epstein’s current project has no overt agenda, per se, but poses serious economic, social, ecological and aesthetic questions. Family Business too concentrates on essential themes of American society. These themes are explored through the prism of a personal narrative, the story of the collapse of Epstein’s father’s furniture company and real estate holdings. At the end of his life, his father sees his own American dream disintegrating before his very eyes. The demise of his businesses is inevitable, as the middle-class families who once lived downtown move out to the suburbs and the area becomes impoverished. A fire in one of the tenements Epstein’s father owns is the last straw. The artist interprets this family drama with empathy, yet sufficient distance to avoid sentimentality. This project conveys the hopes and disappointments of being an American. Yet Family Business bypasses documentary convention, and instead uses symbolism and formal invention to achieve an affect that is more mysterious and open to interpretation than traditional documentary photography. Together, American Power and Family Business illuminate the direction the United States has taken over the last fifty years. The American dream of comfort and security has run up against the reality of consumptive excess and its cultural and environmental consequences. Epstein’s art engages deeply with the world around him, and heightens the viewer’s awareness of that world in all its complexity. +
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Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Gavin Coal Power Plant, Cheshire, Ohio 2003 Š Mitch Epstein, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne
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Poca High School and Amos Plant, West Virginia 2004 Š Mitch Epstein, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne
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Biloxi, Mississippi 2005 Š Mitch Epstein, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne
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Hoover Dam Bypass Project and Lake Mead, 2007 Š Mitch Epstein, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne
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Sloane #30, 2003 Oakland, CA © Lise Sarfati
25 May – 8 July 2007
Lise Sarfati ~ La Vie Nouvelle From 25 May to 8 July Foam presents the work of French photographer Lise Sarfati in La Vie Nouvelle. In 2003 Sarfati travelled around the United States making portraits of adolescents in their own surroundings. The result is a series of photos that show these young people’s complex attitudes in subtle ways. Sarfati’s sumptuous colour photos reveal her subjects’ sense of isolation, distance and emerging sexuality. With her balanced compositions and intense colours, Sarfati’s documentary photos are almost like snapshots in a story. Sarfati came to prominence with a series that she made in the 1990s about life in Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Adolescents in big cities also play a significant role in this series, in which Sarfati captures the sense of awkwardness and alienation that these youngsters feel in incisive and intuitive ways. Photographers have explored the fascinating theme of adolescence in many different ways; identity crises, physical metamorphoses, psychological instability, and burgeoning sexuality. All these issues are referred to indirectly in La Vie Nouvelle. Sarfati is especially interested in the period in teenage life when emotions are always close to the surface. The young people she portrays in her work seem unaware of the photographer’s presence. Their expressions are often pensive, serious or bored, troubled by the feelings that accompany this new phase in their life. The exhibition includes a selection of colour photographs from recent work and a slide show of 70 images accompanied by a musical soundtrack, Candie Mc Kenzie by British electronic duo Death in Vegas.
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Detail of: Face 2 Face project - Separation wall / Security fence, Palestinian side - Bethlehem, March 2007 © JR / jr-art.net
15 June – 2 September 2007
JR ~ Face 2 Face Foam presents Face 2 Face, an exhibition by French photographer and street artist JR from 15 June to 2 September 2007. JR owns the biggest art gallery in the world: he exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not necessarily museum visitors. In what will be his first exhibition in the Netherlands, JR will be showing his work, intriguing portraits in very large formats, inside and outside Foam, as well as in the streets of the city of Amsterdam. The exhibition Face 2 Face is based on a project JR and his friend Marco embarked on in March 2007; the biggest photo exhibition ever. For the Face 2 Face project JR shot portraits of Israelis and Palestinians doing the same job and posted them face to face, in huge formats, on both sides of the Wall of Separation / Security Fence, as well as in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities. Turning his lens on Amsterdam for his first exhibition in the Netherlands, JR uses these portraits as a starting point for discussion. The Face 2 Face portraits are posted on the façade of Foam, as well as inside the museum. And a custom-made Amsterdamthemed installation is also on display inside Foam. With the Face 2 Face project, JR wants to show the face of ‘the other’. He wants to surprise people and make them rethink the things they believe in, to show the resemblance in expression of those photographed and the complexity of the situation.
foam magazine #11 / young
Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
22 June – 22 August 2007
Foam_3h: Rob van der Nol ~ Angels Rob van der Nol photographs young people, adolescents. He is attracted to the process of change and transition in their lives. It reminds him of what is called the experience of transit, moments that lie between waking and sleep, night and day, sites of delicate exchange and metamorphosis. This new series was made on the streets of Berlin, where Van der Nol lived for a couple of months.
Charly, Rico et Sim, Rouzat, septembre 1913, Photograph by Jacques Henri Lartigue © Ministère de la Culture - France / AAJHL
22 June – 26 August 2007
Jacques Henri Lartigue This exhibition is a retrospective of the work French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue made in the first half of the 20th century. Lartigue (1894-1986) began photographing when he was only six, taking his own life and the people and activities of his particular circle as his main theme. He also took photos of numerous sporting events, including car races, French tennis championships and the first manned flights by French pioneer aviators. Although rarely exhibited as such, most of his famous early photos were originally made as stereo images. In addition he produced many photos in a variety of formats and mediums, including glass plates of various sizes, some of the earliest autochromes, and of course 2 1/4 inch square and 35 mm film. His greatest achievement consists of a set of about 120 photobooks that form one of the most impressive visual autobiographies ever made. With a range of new and vintage prints, including remarkable stereo pictures and personal documents, Foam offers a unique impression of the life and work of this pioneer of photography.
Angels II, Berlin, 2007 © Rob van der Nol
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Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Untitled 2007, from Young Americans © Hedi Slimane, courtesy Galerie Almine Rech, Paris.
15 July – 12 September 2007
Hedi Slimane ~ Young Americans
Mitch Epstein, Flag, 2000 ~
© Mitch Epstein, courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne
29 June –19 September 2007
Hedi Slimane is an internationally known photographer, avant-garde artist and fashion designer. For years he belonged to the innermost circle of the worldwide artistic community of artists, filmmakers, and pop and rock musicians. He studied art history at the Ecole du Louvre and worked for Yves Saint Laurent (1996-2000) and Dior (2000-2007). Slimane takes photographs, designs furniture, devotes his energies to architecture and graphic design and constructs installations. His work was exhibited in New York, Berlin, Paris and Zurich and he has several publications to his name. Foam will exhibit his latest work Young Americans, a black-and-white series he shot during his stay in New York, from 15 July to 12 September 2007.
Mitch Epstein ~ American Work Over the last thirty years Mitch Epstein has emerged as one of America’s leading contemporary photographers. His work reveals a unique talent for balanced colour compositions, although he often undermines the formal perfection with his disturbing and occasionally provocative subject matter. American Work examines Epstein’s fascination with American society in a presentation of work from two major projects. Focus of the show are monumental works from Epstein’s American Power series. In this ongoing project Epstein investigates various connotations of the words American Power: from images of power stations to the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. These pictures are accompanied by work from the series Family Business, in which Epstein charts the demise of his father’s family business, referring implicitly to themes such as successive waves of immigration to the United States and the American judicial system.
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31 August – 21 October 2007
Hans Eijkelboom ~ Paris - New York Shanghai Over the past few years, the Dutch photographer Hans Eijkelboom has worked in three of the world’s megacities: Paris, New York and Shanghai. These three metropolises each represent a different continent and culture, as well as the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, respectively. Like a consummate sociologist, Eijkelboom has focused his camera on hundreds of individuals who all behaved or dressed in the same way. These shots were then chronicled and presented according to a set pattern as a catalogue of minute forms of human behaviour. Eijkelboom combines this with images of the urban landscape, generally making just one such photograph. He presents his work, which can be considered conceptual photography, in the form of a simple grid. The tension between uniformity and individuality and the impact of globalization on behaviour and personal appearance are important themes. A catalogue will be published to accompany this exhibition.
foam magazine #11 / young
Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
Jaco, Beaufort West Prison, 2006 © Mikhael Subotzky
20 September – 4 November 2007
KLM Paul Huf Award ~ Mikhael Subotzky As of 2007, Foam will organise the KLM Paul Huf Award. From now on, this prize will be awarded annually to a talented young photographer from anywhere in the world. The decision to honour individuals in this category was inspired in part by the man the award is named after: photographer Paul Huf, who was famous for his openminded approach to the medium and for his enthusiasm in promoting the work of young photographers. This past March, an international jury announced the winners of the KLM Paul Huf Award for 2007: Taryn Simon and Mikhael Subotzky. Each will be given a solo exhibition in Foam, a period as an artist-in-residence in Amsterdam and a sum of € 10,000. The exhibition of Mikhael Subotzky’s works will take place from 20 September through 4 November 2007.
Paris - New York - Shanghai © Hans Eijkelboom
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Hilton Head Island, S.C., USA, 27 June 1992, collection Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam © Rineke Dijkstra
28 September – 12 December 2007
Inside Out ~ Work from Amsterdam archives and collections The city of Amsterdam has a rich collection of photography, although individual works are dispersed among various different museum collections and archives. Foam is putting together an exhibition using material from those archives and collections to show the photographic wealth of Amsterdam. The central theme of the exhibition is the relationship between the individual and his or her appearance and (group) identity. The exhibition will include works from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum, the Gemeentearchief (municipal archives) and the Maria Austria Instituut. +
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Publisher Foam Magazine B.V. Keizersgracht 609 1017 DS Amsterdam - NL T +31 20 5516500 F +31 20 5516501 info@foammagazine.nl www.foammagazine.nl
colophon
Colophon Foam Magazine International Photography Magazine Issue #11, Summer 2007 Editorial Advisers Christian Caujolle, art director VU, Paris / Kathy Ryan, photo editor The New York Times Magazine, New York Editors Marcel Feil / Pjotr de Jong / Marloes Krijnen / Markus Schaden / Tanja Wallroth Managing Editor Tanja Wallroth Co-editor (On My Mind...) Addie Vassie, director of Gallery Vassie for international photography in Amsterdam. Previously, Addie worked eight years at the Victoria & Albert Museum and was print sales manager at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. She also works internationally as a free lance curator, consultant and writer. Concept, Art Direction & Design Vandejong, Amsterdam – Pjotr de Jong / Marcel de Vries / Lucie Pindat Typography Marcel de Vries & Lucie Pindat Contributing Photographers Rineke Dijkstra / Mitch Epstein / Lauren Greenfield / JR /Ryan McGinley / Viviane Sassen / Oliver Sieber / Raimond Wouda Contributing Writers Adam Baran / Merel Bem / David Campany / Marcel Feil / Anneloes van Gaalen / Max Houghton / Christoph Schaden / Catherine Somzé / Tanja Wallroth Cover Photograph Ryan McGinley, Dakota (Hair), 2004 (detail) © Ryan McGinley Copy editor Pittwater Literary Services, Amsterdam - Rowan Hewison Translation Rebecca van Dijck / Sam Herman / Thomas Johnston / Iris Maher / Andrew May / Liz Waters - Pittwater Literary Services, Amsterdam Lithography & Printing Drukkerij Slinger, Alkmaar – NL www.drukkerijslinger.nl
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Binding Binderij Hexspoor, Boxtel – NL www.hexspoor.nl Paper
Arctic Paper Benelux www.arcticpaper.com For this edition the following paper has been selected: Arctic The Silk 130 g (Raimond Wouda) Munken Print White 150 g (JR) Arctic Gloss 130 g (Lauren Greenfield) Arctic The Volume 130 g (Oliver Sieber) Arctic The Silk 130 g (Viviane Sassen) Arctic The Matt 130 g (Ryan McGinley) Arctic Amber Graphic 70 g and 90 g (texts) Arctic Munken Lynx (cover) The production of Foam Magazine has been made possible thanks to the generous support of Drukkerij Slinger, Binderij Hexspoor, Arctic Paper and Grafisch Papier.
Editorial Address Foam Magazine Keizersgracht 609 1017 DS Amsterdam - NL T +31 20 5516500 F +31 20 5516501 editors@foammagazine.nl www.foammagazine.nl Advertising Marieke Kitzen / Eric-Jan de Graaff Contact: Vandejong P.O. Box 92292 1090 AG Amsterdam - NL T +31 20 4622062 F +31 20 4622060 advertise@foammagazine.nl Subscriptions Bruil & van de Staaij P.O. Box 75 7940 AB Meppel - NL T +31 522 261 303 F +31 522 257 827 foam@bruil.info www.foammagazine.nl Start your subscription to Foam Magazine (4 issues per year / incl. airmail) The Netherlands e 50,Rest of World e 55,Club_Foam members / students The Netherlands € 40,Rest of World € 44,Order single issues online: #2 / 8: e 12,50 #9 / 10 / 11: e 15 (incl. airmail) #1 is out of print
ISSN 1570-4874 ISBN-13: 978-90-70516-04-8 © photographers, authors, Foam Magazine B.V., Amsterdam, 2007. All photographs and illustration material is the copyright property of the photographers and/or their estates, and the publications in which they have been published. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. Any copyright holders we have been unable to reach or to whom inaccurate acknowledgement has been made are invited to contact the publishers at info@foammagazine.nl All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the publishers. Although the highest care is taken to make the information contained in Foam Magazine as accurate as possible, neither the publishers nor the authors can accept any responsibility for damage, of any nature, resulting from the use of this information. Distribution: Johnsons International News Italia (coordination) Via Valparaiso, 4 20144 – Milano, Italy www.johnsons.it T +39 02 43982263 F +39 02 43916430 The Netherlands Betapress B.V., Gilze T + 31 161 457800 Belgium Imapress, Turnhout T +32 14 44 25 01 Italy Johnsons/A&G Marco S.p.A., Via Fortezza 27, 20126 Milan T +39 02 27000 823 Austria Morawa Pressevertrieb Ges. Mbh T +43 1 51562 190 Brazil Euromag T + 55 11 36419136 Denmark C2D T +45 3252 5292 Finland Akateeminen Kirjakauppa Stockmann 00358 9 121 43 30
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